


Fealty

by HopeofDawn



Series: The Otto Trilogy [3]
Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Mecha, Possibly Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-23
Updated: 2010-07-23
Packaged: 2017-10-10 18:25:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 34,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/102734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeofDawn/pseuds/HopeofDawn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Otto wakes up, and searches for answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fealty

**Author's Note:**

> Legal stuff: None of these characters are mine. Gundam Wing belongs to Bandai, Sunrise, and Sotsu Agency, among others. For time-wasting purposes only and not for profit, so don't sue, 'kay?
> 
> The Gundam Wing story from an OZ-centric POV, focused around Lt. Otto. This story starts a month or so after Operation Daybreak in episode nine. Warnings for foul language and a certain amount of violence.
> 
> Given that there are no details available on the OZ, the Specials, and how they function, I've sort of reinvented them, using a combination of historical and modern military protocol to keep the 'feel' of the Romefeller/OZ/Alliance structure.

Even now, I don't remember much of what happened after Sanc.

Oh, I've heard the stories--a bunch of dreck about my 'heroism' and all that crap, turning me into some sort of martyr for OZ. Yeah, right. All that story is good for is getting me free beer. I'm still not entirely sure what my reasons were for climbing into that cockpit, but I can assure you that the 'glory of OZ' was not one of them. What did take me there...is something I don't really remember.

What few memories I have of afterwards are a disjointed, jumbled-up mess. I remember being in the dark, and as cold as I've ever been. I couldn't hear much--I think my eardrums were pretty much shot at that point--just the raspy, rhythmic hiss of escaping air. Not sure if was from the Tallgeese or if it was just me, deflating like a week-old balloon.

I do remember Zechs swearing. And not just a polite 'damn' or 'bloody hell'--he was cussing up a blue streak. I think it was the sheer weirdness factor of hearing Zechs yelling _'--the hell he's dead! Cut him the fuck out of there right now, goddammit!"_ that made it stick with me, even if I was busy dying at the time. Would have warmed my heart to hear, if the damn thing was still doing its bloody job. No pun intended.

There was a whole lot of nothing after that. I remember random beeping noises, the clicking of shoes every now and then. Soft voices talking around me like I was a pinata or someone's forgotten stuffed toy, which should have made me resentful, but didn't. Time didn't really exist in that long, featureless darkness. It just rolled me under like the sea, leaving me floating and numb. The only distinct memory I have is of a rough-edged voice saying, _"There's nothing more we can do. He's gone, sir." _It pissed me off...but even that was vague and far away.

* * *

  
I was awake long before I realized it. The doctors told me later that this was normal; that most coma patients will open their eyes, blink, and move long before anything else. It was like rebooting a computer. It doesn't matter how advanced the computer is, how powerful--or in my case, how damaged--they all have to start from square one._ I am a computer. I am a XLR Veridian 8 computer. I am a XLR Veridian 8 computer with three terabytes of RAM... _

End result? No overnight miracle recoveries for me. It took my brain two months to do what a computer could do in seconds. Early on I can only remember recognizing bits and pieces, slotting pictures to words. Light. Bed. Chair. Nurse. It took me almost a week to just figure out my name, rank and serial number. _I am a person. I am a person in a bed. I am a person named Otto. I am Otto, a second-fucking lieutenant in OZ... _The longer I stayed awake, the more I realized I was looking for something. I couldn't figure out what, though--there was no picture that I could attach a word to. So I concentrated on the things I could figure out: thinking, talking, walking. Walking proved to be the hardest. I watched the news compulsively, discovering more of what my brain had forgotten to tell me: I knew Mobile Suits. And I mean I *knew* them the way some guys know football scores, or doctors know vital signs. Leos and Aries, CV joints and Haskins-Giekel subprocessors--I could see them all in my head, feel them under my hands. I could have taken one apart blindfolded.

The doctors and the nurses at the Alliance VA hospital were pros--they didn't so much as breathe a word of any of this to me. Loose lips sink ships and all that. But it didn't matter. Mobile Suits were only the beginning. I soon figured out that I knew a helluva lot more than the average grunt. I knew about Operation Daybreak. I remembered Walker, and Corsica.

I remembered the Tallgeese.

I remembered the Gundams.

I remembered Sanc--and that's when I remembered Zechs.

I was still trying to wrap my brain around that whole mess when the paperwork finally caught up to me. Apparently now that I was no longer a drooling vegetable, I was now free to sign my own damn medical releases. Typical bureaucratic logic: throw reams of legalese at a guy while he's still shellshocked and bedridden, and watch him sign his life away. I found it interesting that they weren't planning on dragging my butt into a court martial--apparently there was some fancy legal quagmire surrounding around my momentary lapse into insanity that the Powers That Be didn't want to touch. Either that, or Zechs had pulled strings again. I remember thinking that I wouldn't have put it past him, as I turned a page--

\--and then I realized just how many strings he really had pulled, as I found out I was no longer a member of OZ.

Apparently I had been granted a medical discharge at some point during the time I was under. It was an honorable discharge, with full benefits--I now qualified as a wounded vet. They'd even awarded me a medal--me! For conspicuous bravery or some such shit. The idea would have made me laugh if I hadn't been so pissed. I looked, and found the person who had signed off on my discharge papers. My commanding officer. Zechs. Of course.

That bastard hadn't even waited a week before he'd written me off.

I threw the papers across the room. When a nurse appeared to pick them up, I demanded to be released from the hospital. She refused. I demanded again, at a louder volume this time. She refused again, and round and round we went until she stumbled out the door, crying. I promptly did the same to her replacement, who was made of sterner stuff--she simply stalked out of the room in a huff. Then I worked my way up a succession of battleaxe nurses until I'd finally ticked off the staff enough that an actual doctor was forced to come in and gave me an ultimatum.

Which was what I wanted, but not quite in the way that I got it.

"Lieutenant, the only way you're going to leave here is by walking out on your own two feet." He stared down at me, stony-faced. No lecture, no compromises. Just a flat, unadorned bottom line statement.

I glared up at him. I knew a brick wall when I ran into it, and this guy had 'immovable object' written all over him. Besides, what else was I going to do? I had nothing to threaten him with, short of a hunger strike. But never let it be said I was a gracious loser.

"You want me to walk? Fine, I'll walk." I carefully ignored the fact that I had limp-noodle legs, shaky knees, and feet that were still pretending that they weren't really attached to the rest of me. "Get a therapist in here, then, because the minute I do, I'm outta here."

"That's fine, Lieutenant." The doctor scribbled something on my chart, utterly unimpressed by my bravado. I snarled at him as he left...but in his position, I supposed I would have been the same. No doubt he heard something similar from every arrogant flyboy who ended up in his ward, much less a guy who'd spent the better part of a month imitating an eggplant. Even so, I'd be damned if I'd spend one day more than I had to in this place.

I didn't care if I had to drag myself around on my knuckles like Otto the Ape-Man. I. Wanted. Out.

At least my little temper tantrum wasn't totally pointless, because after that they started taking me seriously. And by seriously, I mean that they brought in the Physical Therapist From Hell. This guy was (I'm told) thirty-two, and the top therapist they had. He looked barely twenty, all elbows and long fingers, with a mop of red hair and enough freckles to pass for Tom Sawyer without even trying. He also had hands of steel, and his idea of a 'therapy' was something that he must have concocted while interning in the deepest pits of hell. I suspected foul play.

After a week, I was also convinced that this guy had missed his true calling. He should have been an OZ interrogator. If we ever did manage to capture a Gundam pilot, the poor bastard wouldn't have stood a chance. The Therapist From Hell would have had him spilling his guts in ten minutes, tops. Instead I had to spend the better part of a month with the man, which just proves that there's no justice in the world.

That month was just the beginning. It took me a long time to pull myself together. I was a mess; between the internal injuries, the surgeries, and the oxygen deprivation, I was a pasty ninety-pound weakling. Nothing worked quite like I remembered, inside or out, and every day seemed to be a different struggle to overcome my own insubordinate body, which pissed me off. It gave me something to focus on, however, and I used that pain mercilessly. Thinking...led me to places I didn't want to go. Better to focus only on fingers that wouldn't uncurl, or eyes that didn't work properly. Detached corneas--too many Gs, the doctors said. They had operated, and managed to repair the worst of the damage, but.... They never told me outright, but I figured it out soon enough once I found a pair of eyeglasses on the tray next to my meds. I could see--but I could forget about ever piloting again.

At least they didn't try to send anyone in to try and get me to talk about my feelings and shit. Normally it would have been standard procedure. OZ didn't want their vets getting released from the hospital, only to go home and blow their brains out with their service issue, after all. Or worse, climbing a clock tower to blow a few civilians' brains out first...bad press, to say the least. But the VA was running on a skeletal crew as it was, what with the Alliance falling apart at the seams in the aftermath of Operation Daybreak. It seemed like there was a new shipment of wounded every day, and they barely had enough doctors to save the ones they could. Holding our hands and cooing over mental boo-boos was definitely out. Thank the war for the small favors, I guess.

Besides, as stupid as it sounds--my anger was all I had left. Stuck in that fucking hospital, helpless, with its starchy sheets and starchier nurses, its worn blue walls and stomach-turning antiseptic smells.... It made me angry. The fact that it was my own stupidity that had landed me there made me even angrier. And I used it, every time I felt like I was going to collapse, every time the Therapist From Hell pushed me into one more supposed bit of 'therapy' that just made me want to curl up and die. I didn't want my family to see me like this. I had no place to be, nowhere I wanted to go. I just knew I didn't want to be there.

* * *

  
Another month or so, and I was walking. Not well, admittedly; the most I could manage was a slow, careful navigation from point A to point B. I took my victories where I could get them, though, and ridding myself of that stupid wheelchair was definitely one of them. Getting out of the hospital was another.

My doctor wasn't happy when I informed him I was checking himself out. I didn't bother to listen to the lecture. I knew I wasn't fully healed, that I stood the chance of pushing myself too far and crippling something permanently. I just didn't care.

Getting dressed drove home how things had changed. My uniform hung uncomfortably loose, a reminder of how scrawny I'd become. My trousers were bunched up under a tight-cinched belt to keep them from falling off. I'd gone through my meager stash of civvies in the hopes of finding something better, but no luck. I hadn't changed sizes in years, and now I looked like someone's poor cousin, forced to wear castoffs two sizes too large. Looking in the mirror was a bit of a shock. I'd gotten used to avoiding them during my hospital stay, but now.... I raised a hand, ran it through the grey in my hair, the new lines on my face. I looked like my father. I looked...old.

It didn't take much effort to set myself up afterwards. Refusing to avail myself of the benefits offered an ex-Ozzie, I did most of it on auto-pilot. I picked a city at random, mostly by wandering around until I found one where people didn't spit on the sidewalk as I passed. Operation Daybreak had done little to endear OZ to the masses.

A place to live, a job, a bank account...they were all easy enough to acquire. I'd been running for so long on adrenaline, from mission to attack to mission to hospital, that I'd almost forgotten how easy it was to lose yourself in the mundane. Get up, shower, go to work, go home, eat, sleep: day in and day out, rinse and repeat. One day faded into the next, with nothing to distinguish itself. I never bought a newspaper, or watched a news vid; you could have dropped a Leo on my head, and I wouldn't have cared. The war no longer existed. Not for me.

Most evenings found me at Ozzies, the local watering hole. The place was named after the owner, a quiet guy by the name of Nathan Osbourne. I had been going there for quite a while before I found out that Osbourne had formerly been Captain Osbourne, albeit long retired. Of OZ, of course. That made the name of the pub kind of catchy, in a bad pun kind of way: Osbourne the Ozzie. Who could resist?

Ozzies was a place without pretensions--no beautiful people there. Just good beer, greasy food, and people who minded their own business. It was a huge step up from the silence of my dingy little flat. As it turned out, most of the regulars were ex-military of one stripe or another, come to drink, tell war stories and play pool. I didn't mind listening to the bullshit, though I refused to add to it. My preferred spot was the second booth back from the bar, where I could drink and watch football in relative peace.

Given all that, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when Zechs' name popped up. But I was. It was my own damn fault, I guess. It had only been a few months, but it seemed like years. I'd gotten too used to my grey and anonymous life; I'd stuck my brain in neutral and left it there. It was only a matter of time before I got blindsided.

The guy who ended up doing the honors was a punk by the name of Meizer, an Alliance engineer temporarily assigned to Marquise's squad, from what I could tell. The existence of the Gundams was old news by now, especially after what they'd done to the Alliance doves--but not too many of the bar patrons had actually come eyeball-to-eyeball with one. Meizer had, and now that the story had been declassified, he did nothing but gush over his chance to serve with the great 'Lightning Count'.

"--so after we blew the dummy of 01 to pieces, we shipped the real thing off to the Antarctic base. It was too valuable a find just to lose to some idiot general's ego, you know, and the colonel knew it too." I could see heads nodding all around the bar as Meizer held court. Like those idiots had any idea. Even Osbourne was buying into it, lingering nearby and polishing perfectly clean beer mugs. He'd also turned down the volume on the football game I'd been watching. Now *that* pissed me off.

"We reconstructed it--which took some work, believe me! But you wouldn't believe the power in that thing. The gundanium armor, and that beam rifle..." Meizer shook his head. "I never got to see it in action, but trust me, Zechs knew what he was doing. That Gundam...in the hands of a pilot like the Lightning Count? This war would have been over already."

What an utter moron. He honestly thought Zechs was doing all this to win the war? Fuck that. That asshole wasn't chasing Gundam 01. He was still chasing that damn pilot, even after the bastard had died and deprived him of his 'glorious' duel.

Meizer polished off what was left of his beer, and Osbourne obligingly gave him an unasked-for refill. "--hey, thanks." He grinned at his audience and hoisted it in a mock salute. "Anyway, after we've been there awhile, the original pilot shows back up, this time with Gundam 03 right behind him. Freaky kid...I dunno how he survived, but apparently the colonel did. He'd arranged to have the kid picked up and brought to base. So the pilot marches right up to Zechs and demands his Gundam back--and you won't believe what Colonel Zechs did next!"

I grimaced sourly and picked at the label on my beer bottle. Why the hell was I still listening? I could tell them exactly what Lt. Lightning-rod was going to do.

"He gives the kid a chance to get his Gundam back--but only if he can defeat Zechs first!"

Bingo.

"For some reason, the kid decided to fight in Gundam 03," Meizer must have seen the puzzled looks, because he elaborated, "The orange one with all the artillery. I don't know why...maybe he didn't trust our repairs."

"Smart guy," I muttered at the table.

"It really didn't matter in the end, though. You should have seen them go at it. It was amazing! The Tallgeese facing off against that Gundam--you could feel the ground shake every time they landed a hit. Heck, with all that armor I don't think they even noticed. They just kept going at it, fists, beam sabres...you name it." Meizer waved his hands to illustrate, slashing lopsidedly at the air. I snorted into my beer. I swear, Zechs has all the self-preservation instincts of a depressed lemming. The fact that he was still alive was further proof that God looks after fools and children, no doubt.

"I wish I could have seen the end of that fight," Meizer said wistfully. He took the time for another long drink, then thunked the mug back down and continued. "It was hard to tell, but it looked like the Colonel had the Gundam on the defensive towards the end, though they were moving so fast that it was hard to track them. But they never got to finish it. All of a sudden we had incoming Aries all over the place--someone had leaked our location to the authorities, I guess. Either that, or they'd followed the Gundam pilots to the base."

My bet was that Marquise had finally pushed Khushrenada a little too far. Being a maverick was one thing. Outright disobeying orders was something else entirely. That particular slap on the wrist was probably long overdue. For some reason, though, the idea didn't give me as much satisfaction as I'd once thought it would.

"Colonel Zechs covered for us, though. He took them all on himself; charged right into the middle of squadron in order to give us time to get out of the line of fire." Meizer was positively starry-eyed as he thought about it. It was pathetic...and I'd suddenly had enough.

"For the love of--" I slammed my bottle down on the table, lunging to my feet. "He didn't give a shit about any of you assholes. He was just trying to prove he was better than the damn Gundams!"

The bar was silent for a few seconds; you could have heard a pin drop. All eyes had turned to me, some of them indignant, some startled. Meizer opened his mouth to say something, then looked at me and shut it again.

_Kerzchoff, Vance, Walker...._ "You should feel lucky. You got out alive," I told him bitterly. Then I threw some money on the table and left, just walked out. I couldn't stand to look at their faces anymore.

* * *

I avoided Ozzies after that. I suspected that my little fit of fury wouldn't be overlooked that easily, and the last thing I wanted was to run a gauntlet of uncomfortable stares and questions. The beer wasn't *that* good.

Unfortunately, that didn't stop Meizer, who was bound and determined to figure out who had ruined his little show-and-tell. At a guess, I'd say that he probably hung around the pub for a while, hoping I'd show back up. When I didn't, he went looking, and it wasn't like I was hard to find.

I'd almost made it home when I saw him sitting on the front steps of my building, waiting. He stood up when he caught sight of me; his eyes flicking up and down my grease-stained coveralls and shaggy hair. I didn't look too military anymore, which suited me just fine.

"Hello. I'm--" he stuttered to a halt as I walked past without stopping. Doing my best to pretend that he didn't exist, I pulled open the door and headed inside. He had staying power, though. He followed me inside as I wrestled with the lock on my battered mailbox. A quarter turn of the key and two thumps from my elbow, and the mailbox opened to reveal all the crap the world saw fit to send to me that day. Bills, more bills, flyers, insurance papers...I started climbing the stairs, still leafing through my mail.

Meizer tried again, following on my heels. "Look, I don't mean to bother you, sir. I just really want to talk to you." We hit my floor and headed down the hallway, and he kept right on it. Talk about persistent. "You're Lt. Otto, right? I mean--there's just a lot I want to ask, if you don't mind."

Stopping in front of my apartment, I shot him a dirty look. "I mind. So fuck off." I headed inside, fully intending to slam the door in Meizer's face. Unfortunately, there was a booted foot in my way.

Meizer met my glare with one of his own, his face flushed. "Look, I'm not going away until I talk to you. Talk to me now, and I promise I'll never bug you again. Otherwise..." he trailed off, but I could fill in the blanks.

A moment's consideration, and I let the door go. The last thing I needed was this puppy stalking me wherever I went. Throwing my mail into a heap on the kitchen table, I went to the kitchen to grab a beer. "So talk. What the fuck do you want?"

"Well, uh..." he stammered. I straightened, knocking the fridge door shut with a well-placed foot, and watched his eyes rove around my dingy apartment. Even I had to admit it was a shithole--a cramped little flat with thin walls and stained carpet. Meizer looked uncomfortable, shoving his hands into the pockets of his overcoat. Guess this particular OZ hero-turned-car mechanic didn't quite live up to his expectations. "You are Lieutenant Otto, right? The one who served with Colonel Zechs?"

"Yeah, last time I checked. So?" I stared at him across the counter, twisting the cap off my beer and taking a long pull. I didn't bother to offer him one. He wouldn't be here that long.

A slow, uncertain grin spread across his face. "Wow. I mean...I never thought I'd run into you." He hesitated. "I mean--everyone heard about what happened at Sanc. But most people think you're dead. I know I did--I would've never known who you were if you hadn't said anything."

Well, that should teach me to keep my damn mouth shut. Even so, I found myself asking, "Dead?"

"Well, yeah." Meizer gave me a pitying look. "Everyone said you died fighting to free Sanc for Colonel Zechs. I've worked with a few of your crew...I guess they saw most of your last transmission. Said it was one of the bravest things they'd ever seen."

Holy shit. I didn't remember any of that--what the hell had I been on? More importantly, what the hell did I *say*?

A slow flush burning up my neck, I said gruffly, "Well, obviously I'm not dead. Just goes to show you shouldn't believe everything you hear."

"Yeah, but you piloted the Tallgeese, didn't you? I know you were the one the colonel trusted to rebuild it--hell, without your notes, we would have never gotten Gundam 01 put back together." Meizer paused, and I stepped in before he could fly off into Gundam-la-la land.

"I'm touched," I said sarcastically. "But for the record, Marquise didn't trust me with shit. His High-and-Mightiness doesn't trust people. He just uses them." And throws them away when he's done. I took another deep drink, letting the dark, bitter taste of the beer wash away my bile.

"--what?" Meizer sounded utterly baffled. "That's not true. I mean--he trusted us with that Gundam. And the risks he took for me and my crew--"

"Bullshit. Do you know how many men have died under his command?" It gave me a perverse bit of pleasure to pop Meizer's little bubble. "He disobeyed a direct order in order to rebuild Gundam 01, didn't he? Do you think he ever gave a flying fuck about whether or not you would get court-martialed for that too? Assuming OZ even bothered--you and your crew were Alliance personnel, after all. You should feel lucky you weren't just shot and dumped in a ditch somewhere after Marquise bugged out." I drank the rest of the beer down to the dregs, and leaned back against the counter, arms crossed. "Face it. You were just another chess piece for him and his ego, just like everyone else who served under him. And once your crew was done fixing Gundam 01, you just became extra baggage."

That got Meizer riled. He flushed red, shoulders hunching inwards. "The colonel didn't--" He cut himself off, eyes narrowing. His voice changed, losing a bit of its edge. "Are we talking about me...or are we talking about you?"

"Neither," I snapped. "We're talking about fucking Mickey Mouse Marquise. And if you want to play armchair psychiatrist, you can damn well do it somewhere else."

To his credit, he didn't try any more of that touchy-feely crap. At least he was smart enough to figure out that all that would get him was a one way ticket to the door, courtesy of my foot up his ass. There was an expression on his face, though...one that I couldn't quite figure out. "You don't even know what happened to the Colonel, do you?" he said slowly, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Why the hell would I?" Buried alive in a hospital somewhere, doing your best to remember your own damn name, didn't help a person in keeping up with the news. And afterward...well, afterward was none of Meizer's business.

"...no reason at all, if you don't care, I guess." He watched me for a few long minutes, like he was waiting for an apology or an explanation. When I didn't give him one, he shrugged. "All right. I'm sorry I barged in like this. I just assumed--I guess I just wasn't thinking."

Meizer gave a second uncomfortable shrug, hands still stuffed in his pockets, then turned to leave. Halfway through the door, one hand on the doorknob, he said, "You're wrong, you know. Not a single one of us faced charges for what we did. Most of us got promoted or transferred. Zechs...he took sole responsibility." He wavered for a minute, like he wanted to say something else. Then he left, closing the door behind him.

* * *

Meizer kept his word; I never found him on my doorstep again. Too bad I couldn't say the same about all the memories he'd dragged along with him.

I did my best to forget about him, tried to settle back into my comfortable routine--but the things he said kept bothering me. It was like discovering a wound someplace where I couldn't see, a bone-deep stab that twinged every time I thought about it.

_"You don't even know what happened to the Colonel, do you?"_

Damn Meizer anyway. He'd said it, brought it all out into the open, and now it refused to go away. Against my better judgment, I found myself wondering what had happened. Had Zechs finally managed to get himself killed? It was hard to believe--for one thing, Meizer hadn't acted like Marquise was dead--but it could happen. All it would take would be one asinine stunt too many, and *splat*. No more Lightning Count.

If he wasn't dead, though...then that brought up a whole new set of questions. Meizer had said that an entire squadron of Aries had dropped in on them in Antarctica. That was some serious shit; you don't waste that kind of firepower just for a broken-down Gundam and an insubordinate colonel. Even one as spectacularly insubordinate as Zechs apparently had been. Was this another one of Romefeller's shell games? Or had Zechs really pushed Khushrenada's hand too far?

I couldn't leave it alone. Zechs had dropped me from his squad and from OZ, he'd left me to rot in that damn hospital...and now I found myself wondering if I really knew why. I spent the better part of a week chewing over all the possibilities, and ended up with nothing but a bitter taste in my mouth and a lot of unanswered questions. By the end of the second week, I was pacing around the confines of my little life without even registering what I was doing, my mind running in little hamster-wheel circles.

_What if Zechs was dead?  
_

_What if he'd been betrayed?  
_

_What was Khushrenada playing at?  
_

_What if...?  
_

_What if...?  
_

"Fuck it," I finally muttered one day, exasperated. That earned me a few weird looks from the other people waiting at the bus stop, but that didn't matter. I'd finally come to a decision. I didn't know what had happened to the rest of my former squad, not to mention Zechs, but I'd be damned if I was going to spend the rest of my life wondering. I didn't like being manipulated--not by the Alliance, not by Romefeller, and certainly not by Marquise. So I was damn well going to find out the truth, even if it killed me.

Of course, that left me with a big problem. Where the hell did I start?

Lacking any better ideas, I decided to try the obvious. Even OZ needed a certain amount of red tape to function. Hell, the Alliance had positively thrived on it. Personnel records, enlisted rosters...even newszine articles might give me pieces of the puzzle. While all documentation pertaining to Zechs' squad was no doubt still classified, some of the Gundam data--the stuff that had been impossible to keep from the public--had recently been declassified. How useful that information would be was debatable; no doubt it had been thoroughly censored by Romefeller's disinformation goons. But I hadn't spent over a year under Marquise's command for nothing. Maybe I could make a few connections that John Q. Public couldn't.  
First, though, I had to play catch-up. I'd been playing ostrich for several months at this point, and trying to reconstruct what was actually happening with the war was no easy task. The ever-increasing amount of Alliance, OZ, and Romefeller propaganda had squeezed almost every bit of truth out of existence, covering it with a mountain of bullshit. Still....

I got myself a brand-new library card, then damn near wore the thing out in less than a week as I scavenged every newszine, datadisk, and vid they had on the war since the Sanc operation. I found out about the Arctic operation for the first time, touted by the news hounds as the first 'OZ Victory Over Colony Terrorism'. As usual, the press got everything ass-backwards. I had to resist the urge to bang my head against the nearest wall as I watched the vids. They had four Gundams, right where they wanted them--FOUR. And they still ended up with one suicide and three escapees. That wasn't a victory, that was a complete cluster fuck.

After that, the trail got muddy--really muddy. Various mentions of Khushrenada in this press release and that, but almost nothing beyond sound bites and vague political statements. The public destruction of Gundam 01 that Meizer had mentioned. Various sightings of Gundam activity, usually accompanied by large explosions. No mention of the Antarctic operation, and Marquise's name didn't show up anywhere, which didn't surprise me--but the name of Khushrenada's XO, Colonel Une, did. As the new OZ ambassador to the colonies, she was making headlines on a regular basis, even if they couldn't seem figure out whether to call her Colonel Une or Lady Anne. Reading between the lines, I wasn't sure what to think, but when I combined what I knew with a few reports on Fortress Barge...well, I'd been a part of enough shell games to know what they smelled like.

OZ hadn't totally fucked up, though--Colonel Une had actually managed to capture a couple of pilots and their associated Gundams. It had been big news, with splashy vidcasts and front page headlines, pictures and denouncements by the colonies as they tried to save their necks. OZ's follow-up was appallingly stupid, though. I couldn't believe it when I first saw the footage--I had to watch the newscast two or three times before it sank in. OZ had finally captured an intact Gundam, and what did they do? They didn't study it, press it into service, or even take it apart to reuse the components. They just blew it to bits, gundanium and all. First Gundam 01, now 02--the most advanced Mobile Suits ever made, Gundams that our men had bled and died to find, and they went and just turned them into so much scrap, just for the PR... It was more than just a waste. It was criminal.

There didn't seem to be much left to find after that. The big headlines on the war started to fade away the closer I got to current news. There had been only a few colony flare-ups recently; apparently not enough to keep the news hounds happy. Everyone was busy watching the OZ fall apart, of course--the Treize faction was making life hell for the Romefeller loyalists--but there was damn-all coming from Fortress Barge and the colonies. I found that sudden lack of interest a bit odd. Unfortunately I couldn't tell if it was because the major conflicts had subsided, or because the information had been suppressed. If there was something this little research project had taught me, it was that I was no intelligence analyst. I didn't have the skills necessary to pick out the right patterns in the meager amount of information I had in front of me.

But...I knew people who did. All I had to do was track them down. Which, depending on what had happened to the rest of Marquise's squad, might be easier said then done.

First things first: I had to establish my credentials, feeble as they were. Which meant I had to go to the one place I'd avoided like the plague ever since I'd been released from the hospital: the local VA administration building.

Armed with my commission and about ten pounds of medical documentation, I braved the domain of the paper-pushers. The near-civil war within OZ may have thrown them off their stride, but never let it be said that the war had stopped the production of red tape. It took me only about three days of being tossed between one petty bureaucrat to the next--not to mention a good deal of toe-stomping--before I managed to get myself the little micro-chipped plastic card that proclaimed to the world that yes, I was an honorably-discharged veteran, and eligible for all the meager benefits thereof. And while I didn't give a shit about the medical coverage or that other crap, I did get the one thing I truly needed: the slightly-higher-than-civilian clearance necessary to view certain military records. Marquise's counter-intelligence activities would still be highly classified, I knew. I stood a snowball's chance in hell of cracking his file open. But the other, less highly-ranked guys on the squad, especially the noncoms--I should be able to at least find out if they were alive, and maybe, just maybe, where they were currently posted. Of course, doing that meant I had to descend to another circle of administrative Hell.

So I put on my best suit, did my little 'yessir I'm just a humble decorated veteran' monkey dance, and started pestering. My requests were met with bored disdain but no suspicion, near as I could tell. As far as they were concerned, I was just another soldier looking for his mates.

A couple weeks later, some of the information I'd asked for began trickling in. It wasn't pretty. Marquise's squad hadn't been very large to begin with, and it had ended up a lot smaller by the time Operation Daybreak was done. Edwards and Igama were both KIA--Igama had apparently died in Sanc--and three others were listed as MIA. Though I had to wonder if MIA at this point meant 'defected to the Treize faction'. Simora had been invalided out, and Sikes had gotten transferred to Fortress Barge, the poor bastard, though they wouldn't tell me what division he'd been transferred into.

The list went on, but in the end it was Harcourt that gave me the break I needed. He'd apparently been smart enough to keep his head down and his nose clean, and now 'Bubba' was First Sergeant Harcourt, attached to the R&amp;D section of the Twenty-Third Aries Division. Harcourt was nobody's fool. More importantly, he came from a well-connected family, with friends sprinkled all through OZ. If I could find Harcourt, I might just find a few of my answers.

* * *

England was cold this time of year, not to mention rainy. It had been raining almost constantly ever since I had landed at Heathrow, and Suffolk wasn't much better--I could feel the cold drizzle seeping down under the edges of my jacket to soak the shirt underneath. I resisted the urge to pull my collar up higher, hunching my shoulders instead. It didn't help.

My plan was so simple as to be utterly stupid: having tracked the Twenty-third to Lakenheath RAFB, I went online. A quick search gave me the information number for the local OZ liaison, and after checking out my credentials, the liaison gave me Harcourt's contact details. Which brought me to Lakenheath village, England's godawful weather, and hopefully a face to face meeting with the man I needed to see.

The sound of splashing footsteps brought me out of my funk. Harcourt looked pretty much the same as I remembered--big and dumb and wrapped in a pea coat, a black umbrella cocked over one shoulder. It appeared the same couldn't be said for me, though. Harcourt didn't seem to recognize me at first. He crossed the busy street, slowing down as he approached.

"...Lieutenant?" he asked, frowning as he looked me up and down.

"Hi, Bubba." I gave him my best attempt at a smile. It felt strange on my face. "It's just plain old 'Otto' now."

A grin spreading across his broad face, Harcourt stepped forward to shake my outstretched hand. "Otto! Even after I got your message, I could hardly believe it. And now..." He looked me over again, shaking his head. "It's good to see you again. How are you doing?"

"Oh, keeping busy," I said. A small smirk escaped before I could stop it, and Harcourt snickered.

"Getting into trouble again, are you?" He shook his head, still grinning. "Why am I not surprised? Glad to see you haven't turned completely into an old fart." He reached over to knuckle my white-streaked hair, and I knocked his hand away.

"Hey, at least I still *have* mine," I shot back, looking pointedly at Harcourt's thinning blond crew cut.

"But still no sense of humor," he said mock-sadly, unfazed by the accusation. Then he grinned again, slapping me on the back. "Don't ask me why, but I'm glad to see you. How long are you going to be around?"

I hesitated, then said bluntly, "Long enough to pick your brain, I hope. I'm not going to bullshit you, Bubba--this isn't exactly a social call." I met his eyes squarely. He and I had gotten along well enough, but we'd never been best friends. Still, we'd served together, worked together on the Tallgeese...hell, it had been my recommendation that had gotten him assigned to Zechs' command. In the Specials, that meant something. I just hope it meant enough for Harcourt to stick his neck out for me in return.

His grin turned wry. He snorted and shook his head. "Of course it isn't. You really haven't changed at all, have you?" He sighed, then waved a hand at the narrow-fronted shops lining the street. "Come on, let's go somewhere dry. I'll even buy the first round while you tell me this story of yours."

The idea was a good one, and I followed along obediently enough as Harcourt headed back the way he came. He obviously knew where he was going, which made me wonder how long he'd been posted here. Hell, these could be his old stomping grounds for all I knew. I'd never bothered to ask before. Right now I'd have followed him anywhere so long as it got me out of this miserable drizzle.

We finally reached a small pub, tucked away inside a larger brick building that had obviously seen better days. Accessible only by an alley door at the bottom of a steep flight of steps, it was one of those places that only the locals seemed to know about. Harcourt headed inside, closing his umbrella and giving the barkeep a friendly wave. The usual round of greetings was exchanged, and by the end of it we were settled in a semi-private booth towards the rear. This early in the day the place was almost completely dead, and Harcourt's promised first round arrived promptly.

"Cheers," Harcourt said, and lifted his mug to mine. He took a hefty swallow, watched me do the same, and then set it down. "All right then, I've done my part. Your turn."

I nodded. "It's about Zechs." That snapped Harcourt to attention, just like I knew it would. Marquise had that effect on people. "I'm trying to track him down, and getting nowhere fast. I was hoping you might know something--or someone--who could help me out."

"Why?" Harcourt asked. His eyes were narrowed and intent on my face. Assessing possible motives, no doubt. "You're out of it now, Otto. I thought you wanted it that way."

"Maybe. But...there are things bothering me about it." It took a conscious effort for me not to shrug uncomfortably. "I was...out of it for a long time after Sanc. Got a medical discharge." I carefully didn't mention that the discharge had been Zechs' idea, not mine. "I ran across a guy named Meizer. He was an Alliance engineer...did you ever meet him?"

Harcourt thought about it for a minute, then shook his head. "I don't think so. I don't remember any Alliance guys coming on board. Of course, I was transferred fairly soon after Operation Daybreak." He shrugged. "Everything was pretty much up in the air after the colonel got transferred to HQ, and I'm not sure what happened to the rest of the squad." Looking at his face, though, I could tell he had an idea. Harcourt was far from stupid. "Things turned into a real mess after that, from what little I heard." He looked like he was about to say more, but clamped his lips shut over the words and took refuge behind his beer.

"What happened?" I asked. Harcourt didn't reply right away, staring down at the fake wood-grain of the table, and I pressed harder. "I read about the Arctic Operation. Was Zechs involved?" That was an educated guess on my part. His name had never cropped up in any of the news articles, but Marquise had a knack for finding trouble.

"...yeah. I’m pretty sure he was there," Harcourt finally admitted. "Word has it that Khushrenada sent him up there himself. But...I heard that there were some problems." He drained his mug in one long gulp, then set it down. "You know how the colonel is about the Gundams. I don't know the details, but apparently Zechs had been fighting against the pilot of 01--the one who self-destructed. It was some kind of political protest or something. I guess he didn't take it too well."

"Wouldn't surprise me," I commented. "We both know how obsessed he's been over that Gundam."

"I seem to recall he wasn't the only one, either," Harcourt said, grinning crookedly. "You were positively drooling over that thing. It was pretty sad."

I flicked a beer nut at him, and had the satisfaction of seeing it stick to his shirt. "Like you weren't?"

"Hey, I'll admit it--I wanted a crack at it too. But nowhere near as badly as you guys did." His grin faded a bit. "And the colonel got his chance, I guess." He gave me an oddly sympathetic look. "Did you know he was in the Tallgeese for that fight?"

A cold prickle ran down my spine, and I had to fight off a reflexive twitch. "No, I didn't. Glad to see all our work didn't go to waste." Somehow I managed to keep my voice neutral. The Tallgeese...even though I couldn't really remember it, that last nightmare ride still seeped into my dreams sometimes. I wasn't sure if I'd ever be able to look at it again without remembering how close that damn Suit came to killing me.

Harcourt had been at Sanc too. Looking at him, I wondered how much he'd seen.

"So...what happened? Meizer, that Alliance engineer--he said he had been assigned to work with Zechs on salvaging 01. He seemed to know what he was talking about, too." I didn't want to talk about the Tallgeese right now. That wasn't why I was here.

Harcourt leaned back in the booth, frowning as he thought. "I hadn't heard about that, but that's probably because it was too classified. I'd always wondered what happened to that thing, though. Your friend might have been telling the truth." Meizer definitely didn't qualify as a friend in my book, but I stifled the urge to argue the point. "I'd heard rumors that one of the Gundams was being used by the Specials, but I always thought that was just wishful thinking. You're saying they were true?"

"Not quite. Apparently Zechs had reconstructed 01--but he did it against orders." I told him pretty much everything I'd overheard from Meizer. Minus the excessively gushy bits.

"That's...are you sure? A whole squadron? After the colonel?" Harcourt sounded as incredulous as I'd felt that first time I'd heard the story. "Do you know who was in command?"

"Nope. Don't know who sent them, either. According to Meizer, he saw Zechs charging in like the Lone Ranger, and that was all she wrote." Looking up, I added hastily, "I don't think he's dead, though. I wouldn't be here otherwise."

"I see." From the look on his face, Harcourt did see--and probably a hell of a lot more than I wanted. But then, that's why I'd come to him in the first place. "But you have your suspicions, don't you? And no proof. That's why you want my help."

"Yeah," I admitted finally. "I don't know if there's anything I can do. Hell, I'm not sure there's anything I *should* do. But I've had half a puzzle thrown into my lap, Bubba, and trying to figure out the rest is driving me nuts. I need to know what really happened."

Harcourt didn't respond right away. Instead he gazed down into the dregs of his beer, tapping a finger against the rim of the glass like he expected it to answer all his questions. After a long few minutes, he raised his head and looked at me. "It isn't that easy, Otto. This isn't a small request, you know."

"I know."

"I could get court-martialed or worse over this."

"I know that too."

"Hell, Otto... Even if we found your answers, how do you know they'll change anything?"

I was uncomfortably aware that I didn't really have a good answer to that one.

"So why the hell should I do it, Otto?" Harcourt's voice was hard. "You're asking me to risk my career for...what? Your curiosity?"

"No." I took a deep breath, and played my trump card. "I'm asking you to risk it for Zechs."

That stopped Harcourt cold. I followed up on my attack, pushing the point home.

"You know Marquise, Bubba. He's not exactly low profile. Which means there's a reason he's dropped out of sight." My fingers ached; looking down, I found I was clenching my fist on the table. "Maybe it's nothing--maybe we'll find out I'm wrong, and he's just been assigned to..." --I searched for a plausible scenario-- "...command a covert unit or something. But...I don't think that's the case. My gut says there's something wrong."

I leaned back, pushing my hands in my pockets, trying to look determined. I had the feeling I just came off as desperate. "I'm not asking you to go AWOL, or join the Treize Faction, or anything stupid like that. All I'm asking is for you to point me in the right direction. I know there might not be anything we can do about it, even if we do find something. But don't you think it's worth the risk to know for sure?" I was pushing it, I knew, and if this had been about any other officer, Harcourt would have laughed in my face. But this was Zechs we were talking about. That automatically changed all the rules.

Harcourt stayed silent for another few minutes, eyes turned toward the muted game playing on the vid over the bar. Finally he squared his shoulders, and lifted a hand for another round. "All right, Otto." He turned a deceptively mild gaze on me. "This is probably one of the stupider things I've ever done--but I'll help you out. I'm not going to promise I'll find anything, though."

I didn't bother trying to fight the slow, pleased smile spreading across my face. "Hell, Bubba--the fact that you'll try is good enough for me." The barkeep plunked down a second set of mugs in front of us, and I lifted one to him. "Here's to mutual stupidity."

"To mutual stupidity... " Harcourt lifted his own, smirking. "And never knowing when to quit. Cheers."

* * *

  
I'd come to the right guy. Harcourt wasn't any more of a spook than I was--but he had friends who were. Friends active in the service, unlike me, and who owed him a few favors. That got both of us access to information so classified we probably should have been handling it with lead-lined gloves, not to mention a lot of conversations that started with "You didn't hear this from me, but..." The puzzle pieces started falling into place pretty fast after that, and the picture they made proved once and for all that truth really is stranger than fiction.

Zechs had been part of the Arctic operation, as I'd suspected. An active part, at that--he'd gone head-to-head with Gundam 01, and by all accounts had been making a pretty good showing in the Tallgeese before things went fubar. The wrench in the works? Colonel Une's attempt to hold the colonies hostage to force the terrorists to surrender. Understandably, OZ had kept that little bit of blackmail buried from all Earth-based media. Even given how alienated the colonies were from their Earth neighbors, nothing says 'bad PR' like threatening the mass murder of millions of innocent civilians.

Everything seemed to go downhill after that. Almost everyone who knew about the incident agreed that Une had overstepped her bounds: Zechs thought so, Khushrenada thought so, and the terrorists had definitely thought so, since they'd decided to blow themselves up to prevent it. There was some wrangling about what to do with the remains of Gundam 01 after that, and Meizer's story about Zechs' little mutiny seemed to be pretty close to the mark.

Given how high-profile Zechs was, though, Khushrenada had apparently decided that a court martial wasn't an option. Instead, he gave Zechs a devil's deal--a 'test', using the Tallgeese against several squadrons of Aries and Cancers. We managed to get our hands on the troop allotment for that little test. The firepower sent in against him was insane. Even Zechs couldn't win against those kinds of odds...and he didn't. He'd taken out most of them, but eventually Tallgeese went down over the Indian Ocean, just like Khushrenada wanted.

Which meant—that Marquise was dead.

That took the wind out of my sails. For all that Marquise liked to push his luck, I still found it hard to believe that it had finally caught up to him. But the proof was right there in front of us, laid out in black and white. Marquise was dead, his reputation whitewashed clean by being 'killed in the line of duty'.

Harcourt didn't say much once we'd found out. Me--I just...stopped, for a day or two. I'd gotten the answer I'd been looking for. Now that I had it, I didn't know what to do. With Zechs gone, I felt old and worn out, not to mention stupid. What had ever made me think I'd get any answers from a ghost?

* * *

  
I was a hair away from tucking my tail between my legs and going home. Then the first sightings of 'Ambassador Peacecraft' aired, and knocked me for a loop all over again.

I damn near killed myself lunging for the remote when that first vidcast aired, tripping over a chair in the process. The sound came up, and the news continued, zooming in on those arrogant aristocratic features.

_//...in other news, Sanc representative Ambassador Peacecraft met with L2 representatives today--//_

I couldn't believe it. No mask, no uniform--hell, he hadn't even bothered to cut his damn hair. "What the fuck? That sonuvabitch--ambassador, my ass!" Harcourt must have thought I was nuts, the way I was hopping around like an idiot--I'd also stubbed my toes--and swearing at the screen. His reaction was pretty restrained, all things considered.

"What the--? Otto, what the fuck are you babbling about?"

"It's HIM." I stabbed an accusing finger at the vidscreen. The camera angle had swung away while the broadcaster babbled on, showing Zechs in among some random colony bureaucrats. It was a face I'd only ever seen once. One even the Tallgeese couldn't rattle out of my brain.

"Who?"

"Zechs! It's fucking Zechs! He's alive." I grabbed a random handful of classified printouts and waved them in illustration. "These things are full of shit. He isn't any more dead than I am!" The papers got tossed to the floor.

Harcourt stared at the screen, dubious. "...are you sure? Maybe it's someone who just acts a lot like him."

"Trust me," I snapped sourly, "No way would the universe create two of *him*." There had to be some kind of cosmic rule against it. "I'm sure. It's Zechs."

"Okay...let's say you're right." Harcourt still sounded doubtful, but he was willing to play along. "What the hell is he doing out there in the colonies? And what's with this Ambassador Peacecraft stuff?"

"I don't know." I growled at the screen as the newscast switched over to an ad, full of shiny lights and fake explosions. "I guess we're going to have to find out, aren't we?"

Harcourt heaved a sigh. "Joy."

* * *

  
This time we started digging in a couple different directions. My father's lands were in Wüttenburg, not far from the Sanc border. Even though I hadn't been home in years, I still knew the Peacecraft name--everyone did. The rulers of Sanc had been notorious in their devotion to total pacifism. We'd all heard the stories about the royal family, and what had happened when the Alliance came stomping through. As far as anyone knew, the recently-returned Princess Relena was the only surviving Peacecraft. So what was Zechs' angle?

We had to back-figure his trail from two directions--before OZ, and after OZ. Was Zechs really Milliardo Peacecraft? Everything we turned up seemed to indicate he was. That was something I had to chew on for a while. I'd been mouthing off to a fucking PRINCE. Not only a prince, but heir to the throne of Sanc. There had to be some sort of special kind of punishment meted out by Romefeller for that sort of thing. Try as I might, though, I just couldn't think of him as 'Prince Peacecraft'. I'd seen too much of him. He wasn't even 'the colonel', the way he was for Harcourt and Meizer. He was just...Zechs.

And none of this told us where he'd gone after Khushrenada's little test, or why. Was he really working towards peace in the colonies? Maybe. But I doubted Zechs planned to achieve that just through speech-making and glad-handing politicians. It wasn't his style. It had to be a cover for something else. If he wasn't dead, and the Tallgeese had never been recovered.... All of a sudden those reports of the Gundam skirmishes around the colonies started to make more sense. Zechs was still fighting. Maybe it was for peace. Maybe it was just to poke Khushrenada in the eye. But I'd bet my last cred that he was also chasing after the Gundams.

Now I was covering familiar ground. Maybe I didn't know where Zechs was, but if I could track down the Gundams, I knew I'd pick up his trail soon enough. When it came to Gundams, I had a wealth of information at my disposal. The scientists who'd created the Tallgeese...they were out there somewhere. All I needed was to find myself one.

My swiss-cheesed memory wasn't nearly good enough for something like this, so we had to rely on all the documentation Walker had dug up for the Tallgeese. It wasn't anything Harcourt and I hadn't seen before, but now we were digging through it with new eyes. Instead of schematics and test outcomes, we concentrated on profiles and development team backgrounds. The Alliance's background checks were invaluable, even twenty years out of date...they gave us real names, families, even dental records. Taking that information, we cross-referenced it with all data about Zechs' last known location. The Tallgeese wasn't built for long-term flight. It would never have even made it to shore on its own, much less into orbit. So where had it gone? We were hoping to find a transport plane, or unidentified shuttle--something big enough to transport a MS. Instead we found a ship--the _Lachesis_\--meandering its way right through the test zone, barely hours after Zechs' supposed demise.

The ship was owned by the International Resource Recovery group, based out of Singapore. The captain? He'd covered his tracks well, but there was no mistake. It was Howard McClure--M.I.T alum, former Alliance scientist and MS systems developer.

After months of floundering, I'd finally found a target. His ship was the only thing in the right place and time to be Zechs' mysterious savior. I didn't know how or why it had been there...but I was willing to bet good money that it wasn't a coincidence.

* * *

  
Six hours later, I was on a plane and heading for the Pacific. The _Lachesis_ was a salvage ship, ostensibly. Operating under the auspices of a Sweepers salvage group, it was currently moored in Hawaii, indistinguishable from all the other freighters except for its sheer size; the thing was fully the size of a MS carrier. And if my suspicions were correct, that's exactly what it had been--at least before the Gundams had gone back into space. Hiding in plain sight...what was one more freighter in an ocean full of them? The terrorists had balls, I'll give them that.

So I decided to take a leaf from their book. They were looking for crew, as most freighters did while in port. I told them I needed a berth, and didn't even pretend to be anything other than I was--a one ex-lieutenant Otto, surly engineer in need of work. It was a risk--given the kind of stuff they'd apparently been sticking their noses into, I half-expected them to shy away from anything that smacked of the military--but not as much as if I had tried to make up some kind of flimsy cover story. I wasn't OZ intelligence; I didn't have the resources to make sure it was deep enough to stand up against any real sort of background check, much less the suspicions of a crew full of colony sympathizers.

But with the splintering of the Alliance after Operation Daybreak, not to mention the problems with the Romefeller and the Treize factions, ex-military anything was a dime a dozen. My time in Zechs' squad was so classified that most of OZ hadn't known what we were doing, much less the colonies. Without it, I was just another out of work grease monkey.

My best cover, oddly enough, would be no cover at all. After all, what kind of spy announces he's from OZ?

It worked, amazingly enough--though the way I managed to tear down and rebuild a good portion of their diesels in less than a day probably had something to with it. A brief talk with the mate, and I was in. We sailed a few days after, heading for Los Angeles.

Most of the crew were Sweepers, and fairly standoffish, which I'd expected. I was the new guy, after all--and I knew I was being watched. So for the most part I kept my eyes open, my head down, and did my job. This whole cloak and dagger thing wasn't exactly something I was trained for, and the last thing I wanted was to seem too interested in anything.

The first time I actually saw the man I was after was a shock, though. The fabled Howard McClure looked a hell of a lot like a deranged beach bum. Standing at a bare couple inches over five feet, he was a bizarre figure in shades, Hawaiian shirt and sandals--about as far from a sober freighter captain as one could get and still be part of the same species. Mexican beer in hand, he ran the ship with the careless attitude of a preoccupied genius, leaving Russell--the first mate--to handle most of the day to day jobs that needed to get done.

Still, there was no mistake. His hair and clothing might have changed, but the face was pretty much the same--this was the Howard I'd been looking for. Which left me with a real problem. I'd found my Gundam connection...so now what the hell was I supposed to do? I couldn't exactly walk up to the man and say, "I know you helped build the Gundams. Wanna compare notes?" Talk about a good way to get turned into fish food.

It was times like this that I really, really wished I was still a part of OZ. I could really have used some backup right about then.

I dithered for a while, watching Howard and worrying. We crossed the Pacific several times in the meantime, doing random salvage runs, nothing out of the ordinary. No one said anything suspicious, no one did anything suspicious--if Howard hadn't been on board, I would have been convinced I'd gotten on the wrong damn ship. As it was, I was damn frustrated. The war wouldn't wait for me, and the longer it took me to find the Gundams, the more chances Zechs would have to try one damnfool stunt too many and get himself killed for real.

Eventually my stubbornness paid off, though--and when it did, it paid off big.

My big discovery happened in Singapore, at the end of another deep-sea run. I'd been helping on the shipside end of things, hooking up odd-shaped bits of salvage to be lifted off by the cranes. It had taken most of the day to unload--big ship, remember?--and once we were done, I decided to grab a breather.

Pouring myself a cup of black-tar coffee, I left the stuffy break room in favor of one of the upper decks. From there I watched the mate run around with a shipper's foreman, squawking at each other and pointing out at things on an oversized sheaf of papers. I wasn't looking at anything in particular, just letting my eyes wander as I tried to figure out what it was that was bothering me. It was on the tip of my brain, just skirting the edge of memory....and then I felt the hair on the back of my neck prickle. Straightening, I leaned over the rail as I realized what I was looking at, damn near dropping my mug in the process.

"I'll be damned..." There on that empty deck, cast into relief by the late afternoon sun, was the evidence I had been looking for.

Almost no one else would have recognized it--only someone who had worked with Mobile Suits day in and day out would have understood exactly it was they were looking at. But if I'd seen it once, I'd seen it a hundred times: the telltale signs of where a MS had lain. Shifting back and forth with the rocking of a ship, reinforced armor plate etching grooves into the softer steel of the deck...the pattern was unmistakable. And from the layout of the marks, the MS they'd carried had been a big fucker.

The deck didn't stay empty for long, of course. I spent a good amount of time pacing out those wear marks under the guise of moving equipment around, taking rough measurements and muttering to myself. The Gundam--by this point I was sure that's what it had been--had been almost as large as the Tallgeese, and that was saying something. It was also much bulkier; I found grooves that seemed to point towards wing extensions or flaps of some kind, though tucked in closer to the chest unit than was normal...or useful, for that matter. Another variable-geometry design? I couldn't tell. It wasn't until I managed to scribble out a rough outline on a bit of graph paper that I even realized which one I'd found. Gundam 02. The one we never seemed to see coming--the one that had rescued its buddy, 01.

The one that had killed Vance.

I crumpled the paper in my fist, remembering. We had been so close...and no doubt these were the people that had helped that bastard get away. The sudden rush of anger surprised me. I hadn't realized how much a part of me still hated the Gundams, even now. Not so much for Vance's sake, or even Walker's--but for all of those poor bastards who'd had to die just so the colonies could prove a point.

Looking around, I slowly unclenched my fist. No one had noticed my little fit inside the noisy, cramped confines of the pump room, and I folded the paper, tucking it into an inside pocket. It wasn't much in the way of information, but it was a start. In the end, it didn't matter whether I loved the Gundams or hated them. They were still the key to this whole mess, and that meant that I had to figure them out.

* * *

Unfortunately, the Sweepers figured me out first.

It was my own damn fault, really. We were a week out of Guam when it hit us: a monster storm that blew up out of nowhere. It was one of those freakishly fast tropical weather changes that seemed almost designed to fuck up the shipping lanes. Normally a ship the size of the _Lachesis_ wouldn't even notice, but this particular storm was bidding to become a hurricane, and doing its level best to swamp us under in the process. Still, we managed to hold our own.

Then we sprang a leak. It wasn't a gusher, and we were too damn busy to notice until too late that the water had gotten into the electrical system. An entire series of breakers fried, taking down a good portion of the ship's power--including one of the engines, which was bad, and all of the bilge pumps, which was worse. We ended up with every capable hand we could muster working belowdecks, trying to fix the damage. Much to my surprise, that included the ship's captain, which meant I finally got to see the legendary Howard in action.

"Shine a light over here, Simons--yeah, there!" With water dripping everywhere, everyone resembled drowned rats--greasy rats, at that. Posabella, the ship's engineer, looked like a troll in the dim light, with oil smeared over a dark-tanned face and arms as he tried to resurrect our failing power grid. "Fuck! Howard!" The floor tilted under our feet, water sloshing around ankles.

"Working on it!" Howard snapped back. "Backups are overloaded--we're starting to lose them!" He glared at Posabella, though the effect was ruined by the waterlogged gray fringe hanging limply around his face.

"Motherfuckin'--" Someone finally managed to slap a patch in place over the worst of the leak, and the spray of water petered out to a trickle. I was grateful, considering what we were working with--death by electrocution is not a fun way to go. Posabella didn't even notice as he continued to rewire the scorched and melted sections of paneling, the rest of us slapping in replacement fuses where we could and rerouting around where we couldn't. Muttering something ugly in Italian, Posabella connected up a last wire and ran a meter over it. "We're live--try it!"

Howard opened up a panel, and thumbed the main reset--when it didn't work, he gave it a thump. Lights sputtered on, flickered, then died. We could hear the asthmatic rumble of the pumps as they did the same.

Posabella kicked the bulkhead. "Flaming bitch--she's got juice, so what the hell is wrong *now*?" This ship didn't seem to like that much. It shuddered, and new alarms wailed as she slipped further sideways, the decking now at a dangerous angle.

The intercom crackled open. "Captain! We're listing badly --the wind is pushing us hard astern!"

"Tell me something I don't know," Howard snapped, hands wrist deep in cabling. He ripped a panel out, did something I couldn't quite see, then shoved it back in. "Stevens, gimme some readings!"

"All green over here!" came the shout from the hallway.

"Drake?"

"The same. Everything five point five through five point eight--all green!"

"Why the hell...?" Howard muttered to himself, scratching his head. Posabella started running the meter along the main lines, checking for dead zones.

"Otto!" he snapped. "Check the engine that's down--see if the problem is over there. Goddamned motherFUCKing piece of obsolete shit that it is..." He continued to mutter as he worked his way down the hall.

"Got it." I snagged a light, using anything handy for balance as I waded my way up the deck. Hanging on to the housing for support, I popped the top panel off and peered in. Indicators flickered red in the shadows, and I grunted in satisfaction. I shoved another panel out of the way, tacking the light by its magnetic 'feet' to the wall.

"I've got something!" I hollered back at the others, fingers busily tracing loops of wire. "Looks like it's a feedback problem." The dim-witted little processor that monitored this particular engine had obviously failed to switch back from the emergency circuit series to the main. The ISCE card configuration was weird too, I noticed.

"What?" I'd forgotten about Howard, who began splashing his way up the deck. "Wait, don't--!"

I didn't even think about it. I knew exactly what this custom configuration was supposed to do--hell, had gotten my fingers scorched by it more than once. And if I was really, really lucky, the controller card itself wasn't fried...I reached in, yanked out two wires, reconnected another, and bypassed the problem altogether. A press of the reset button, and we were good to go.

"Try it now!"

Posabella hit the switch again, and the engine rumbled to life under my hands. The lights flickered on--and stayed on--and a cheer went up from the rest of the crew. I grinned as I began shoving the engine cover back into place, giving it a satisfied thump to latch it.

The chief engineer wasn't done just yet, though. "Party time comes later, boys!" he barked. "Drake, Isano--take lights and go check for more leaks! Stevens, check the bilge pumps. Otto, nice work. Now get your ass down to engine number two and make sure nothing got fried while we were playing around with this piece of shit!"

I had to resist the urge to salute. "Anything you say, boss," I remarked instead, stepping around Howard and grabbing the light to take with me.

It was too bad I was so damn satisfied with myself--otherwise it might have occurred to me to wonder what Howard might have seen.

* * *

Two days later, Howard cornered me in the break room.

"It's Otto, right?" The question came from behind, interrupting me in mid-pour. I glanced over my shoulder to see Howard leaning against the doorway, cigar in hand.

"Yeah, that's right." My reply probably sounded pretty damn wary--which would be only natural, because I was. From what I'd seen, Howard didn't make idle chitchat with random crew members. Hell, two months aboard ship and I'd barely spoken to the man: usually along the lines of 'move that over there', followed by a 'yessir'. For Howard to track me down and start up a conversation...something was up.

"Just wanted to say that you did some good work on that engine. You found the problem pretty damn fast--good job."

I shrugged a shoulder, and finished pouring my coffee. "It wasn't that big a deal. The chief did most of it."

"True. Posabella's a good engineer. I've worked with him for years," he said casually. I turned to face him, trying to get a sense of where he was going with this as Howard continued. "He was working for me back when I first figured out the in-series power augmentation. Said it was the most crack-brained idea I'd ever come up with, and that I'd blow the whole damn board."

Since I didn't know what to say, I tried to put on an interested face. "Oh?" He was still wearing those damn shades of his, which made it impossible to read his eyes.

"Yep. And he was right. Board I was working on fried faster than a greased greyhound. He called me a damn fool when I decided to try it on the Lachesis' engines, too."

"Really." _Oh crap..._

"Yep. It worked, though. Boosted efficiency about twenty-six percent. Even if he did damn near electrocute himself the first few times he worked with it--caused a power surge that fried half the bridge, too. He was pretty pissed about that."

"I'll bet." I resisted the urge to fidget nervously. This had to be Howard's version of Chinese water torture--interrogation through polite chitchat.

"Yeah. Good thing you knew just how to reset it, huh? I gotta admit, I'm impressed. It's not every day I run across someone who knows how to handle one of my custom jobs." Howard tilted his shades down, looking over them with narrowed eyes. I felt a bead of sweat trickle down my back.

Well, shit.

Stalling for time, I lifted my mug and took a sip, thinking furiously. Maybe Howard was the only one who had figured it out? Maybe so, but I couldn't count on it. The Sweepers were a tight bunch--close-mouthed gypsies with an eye for salvage--and Howard was far from stupid. He wouldn't have confronted me without some kind of plan. Not when he didn't know what my reaction would be.

Fuck it. I set the mug back down on the counter and crossed my arms. "Well, I should. After all, your biggest 'custom job' did its damnedest to kill me. Twice," I added as an afterthought.

"You don't say." Howard seemed a bit taken aback. No doubt he thought he'd cornered himself some kind of smooth-talking OZ operative. The fact that I wasn't trying to weasel out of his accusations was probably throwing him for loop.

"Yeah. I'm sure you remember it. Mobile Suit prototype, big fucker? Goes by the name of the Tallgeese?"

Howard didn't say anything for a moment. Then a corner of his mouth curled up in a lopsided smirk. "Oh, I remember it." Looking me up and down, he said pointedly, "But I don't remember you."

"No reason you should." I snagged my mug again, and took a gulp of coffee. "I'm just the guy who took over after you moved on to bigger and better things." I gave him the hairy eyeball, my meaning plain. "Someone had to put the thing back together after we'd hauled it out of mothballs, after all."

"We?"

"Yeah, 'we'. As in myself and Zechs Marquise." And Walker, but I doubted the name would mean anything to him. The mention of Zechs, on the other hand, had caused a definite shift of...*something* in the conversation, though I'd be damned if I could figure out what.

"You know Zechs?" Howard asked skeptically. I gave him a nasty look. Shouldn't that be my line?

"Yeah. Served with him for about a year and half, up until the Sanc operation." Now it was my turn to smirk. For a man with a bucket on his head, Zechs certainly got around. "I take it you know him too?"

Thankfully Howard didn't try to feed me any bull about seeing 'the Lightning Count' on the news, or anything. "Yeah. Me and the boys fished him out of the ocean after Khushrenada's little demonstration."

Well, damn. *That* hadn't been in the report. One of the risks of secondhand intel, I supposed. "Oh? Was it your idea to send him up to play Prince Peacecraft?"

Howard shook his head, confirming my suspicions. That whole idea had 'lame-brained Marquise stunt' written all over it. "Nah. Why would we? All I did was help him fix the Tallgeese."

"Feeling nostalgic, were we?" Either that, or Howard was playing a much deeper game than I gave him credit for.

"A bit." He shrugged. "Gave me a real turn to see the Tallgeese in action after all these years. Gotta admit, I was curious to meet the guy good enough to pilot it." He pushed away from the doorframe and stuck the cigar in his mouth, chewing on it thoughtfully. "Never figured I'd meet the person who'd managed to put my Humpty Dumpty back together again, though."

"Yeah, well..." Should I feed Howard a line of bull, and hope he swallowed it? Or just tell him the truth, and hope it didn't get me shot?

What the hell. In for a penny...I'd always been a lousy liar.

"...I figured if you wanted to chase Gundams, the best place to start is with the people behind 'em," I sat down on a chair, mug in hand, and braced a foot on one table leg. If I was going to get shot, I wanted at least to be comfortable. "Howard K. McClure--along with Dr. Jerrod Slator, you two were the geniuses of the original Mobile Suit development team. But you quit the project after the Tallgeese was developed, and then apparently turned your attentions to making Gundams." Ignoring the hot prickle of sweat down my neck, I looked at him, daring him to call me on it. "Am I wrong?"  
Howard was very still. I watched him glance to the side, and shake his head very slightly. Then he focused his attention back on me, saying mildly, "I'm impressed...I haven't heard those names in years. How the hell did you figure it out?"

I gave him a slight smirk. So he had brought backup after all. "Are you kidding? I could recite the original specs of that metal monster in my sleep. If Zechs noticed the similarity between the Tallgeese and the Gundams, what makes you think I wouldn't?" I shrugged. "Tracking you down was the trickiest part."

"Well, you've found me. Congratulations." Howard didn't look all that pleased. Go figure. "Now what?"

I snorted in amusement--mostly at myself. If Howard expected some kind of diabolical master plan from me, he was going to be disappointed. I'd been flying by the seat of my pants for *months*.

"Actually, I was hoping you could tell me that." I shrugged, setting the mug back down. If I survived past the next few minutes, I was definitely going to break out part of my stash. Nothing better to celebrate a near-death experience than large amounts of alcohol. "You're one of the movers and shakers behind the Gundams--or at least you were. I'm just a grease monkey with a few connections. Ask anybody."

"So you've gone to all this trouble for...what? Just to get my autograph?"

"Nope." I looked up from the table, wondering what he was thinking. The moment of truth...cheesy, but true. "Zechs has been chasing after the Gundams for years now, and I don't think he's going to let a little thing like common sense stop him. So to find Zechs, I have to find the Gundams. And to find the Gundams, well...that's what I need you for."

Howard let me sweat for a several long minutes. Then he half-shrugged, pushing away from the doorframe. "Considering what you just told me, I'd say you're assuming a hell of a lot." He poured himself a cup of coffee, and turned to stare at me with narrowed eyes. "Don't you think it's a bit risky chasing around after known terrorists?"

"Like I have anything to lose?" I said in bitter amusement. "I'm throwing myself on your mercy, since it's fairly obvious I suck as a snoop. If you want to help me, great. If not..." I shrugged. "I'll have to try something else." Despite my bravado, though, I knew Howard was my best--hell, my only chance at getting the inside track on the war. If he turned me down--and didn't use me as shark bait--then I would be out of options. Any options short of trying to commandeer a colony-bound shuttle and getting my fool head blown off, anyway.

Howard snorted. "Right." Rifling through a half-empty box of doughnuts, he grabbed one and began heading for the door.

All this, and he was just going to walk away? Torn between relief and anger, I called after him, "So...what's it going to be?"

"I'll let you know." Coffee in one hand, danish in the other, Howard gave me a smirk. "After all, it's not like you're going anywhere."

* * *

After that I found myself with too much time to think--something I'd been doing my best to avoid for a while. My shipboard duties hadn't changed, and no one said anything to my face, but I could still tell that word had gotten out. It hung in the air, like the extra uncertain space given to a condemned man; no one wanted to talk too long or sit too close. Instead they just watched, waiting for Howard to make his decision. And I continued to do my job, even as I wondered how the hell I'd gotten myself into all this in the first place.

Who was I kidding? I wasn't some kind of black ops superspy. And as badly as I wanted to confront Zechs, to kick his ass and find out why he had buried me in that hospital, I was under no illusions about being anything other than a very small fish swimming with some very big sharks. Poking my nose into the affairs of the likes of Romefeller and the Alliance--hell, even radicals like White Fang, was stupid bordering on the suicidal.

But...I'd be damned if I'd spend the rest of my life wondering if I'd been used. Wondering if anything I'd done was worth anything. So if that meant tracking Marquise all the way to hell and back, then that's where I needed to go. I guess Walker hadn't been the only one infected with the Marquise Disease.

Some days I'm just a little slow on the uptake.

Meanwhile, Howard was playing games of his own.

The first time it happened, I was in the bathroom, razor in hand and a face full of shaving cream. Howard popped his head around the corner.

"You were a second lieutenant in OZ, right?"

I froze in mid-lather. "Uh...yes?" What was I supposed to say, anyway?

"All right. See ya!" And he was gone.

_What the hell...?  
_

He hit me again, oh-so-casually over breakfast, in full earshot of most of the crew.

"Court-martialed twice, were you?" I damn near choked to death on the piece of toast I'd been chewing. How the hell had he found out about *that*??

I sent my best glare his way. Unfortunately for me, he seemed to be immune. "One and a half times, actually. They dropped the charges the second time around."

The bastard had the gall to smirk at me. "You don't say. Lucky for you, huh?" Then he turned and engaged the first mate in conversation, ignoring me completely.

It was about then that I realized that whatever the hell Howard really was, he had connections that made mine look like a couple tin cans tied together with string. That wasn't the last time he pulled his little sneak attack, either. He kept popping up over the course of the next couple of weeks, asking questions about things so classified I couldn't even begin to figure out how he'd learned about them.

Down in the engine room, elbow deep in grease:

"--so, how did the Victoria facilities work for ya? They make good Leos, but I bet they had a hissy fit when you told 'em they were going to work on my Tallgeese, eh?"

A few days later, cornered in one of the hallways:

"--You were with Marquise on L3 a year or so ago, weren't ya? Some kind of attached embassy to the Alliance bigwigs?"

Then even later, as I took a breather on one of the aft cargo deck:

"--faced off with Wing, didja?" At my baffled look, he elaborated. "Gundam 01. Intercepting it during re-entry--that must have been hairy."  
What was I supposed to do? The questions Howard asked made it obvious he already had the answers. I had no counter to this bizarre little game of cat-and-mouse, so I answered him as straight as I could. I certainly didn't owe OZ anything anymore, that's for sure.

The last time he caught me, I was on the foredeck, getting some air. I wasn't doing anything in particular, really...just leaning on the rail, fidgeting with the ragged little sketch of Gundam 02 between my fingers and thinking. It was almost impossible to sneak up on someone up there, and I heard him clomping up the decking long before I saw him.

"Heya." Howard raised a hand in greeting. The day was pretty overcast, grey and hazy, but those shades were still parked firmly on his nose. If it had been anyone else, I would have called it a pathetic attempt to be cool, but even I could figure out that Howard didn't give a rat's ass about what other people thought. The shades were just part of the whole Howard package deal.

"Hey." I watched him approach warily, waiting for the next oddball question. So far the only thing he hadn't questioned me on was my sex life or my motives. To tell the truth, I wasn't sure which I'd want to answer less.

But he didn't say anything, just walked up the rail and draped his arms over it, looking out at the ocean. I waited for him to say something, make some joke--when the silence stretched on, I had to resist the urge to twitch nervously. I'd almost decided to leave when he finally spoke.

"I've decided to help ya out."

"What?" I shouldn't have been so surprised, but I'd almost given up hope. Despite all the questions he'd asked me, not one of them had been about anything that mattered. Or so I'd thought. And now... "Just like that?"

"Just like that." Howard turned, looking at me over the tops of his sunglasses. "Wasn't that what you wanted?"

"Well yeah, but..." I'd expected to have to do some pretty hefty bargaining to get it--or at least a good deal of groveling, being an ex-Ozzie and all. But Howard had found me out, cut me off at the knees--and now he was handing me a blank check. Every ounce of paranoia I possessed was screaming that this was too good to be true. "Why?" I asked, trying to keep from sounding as off-kilter as I felt.

"Do I need a reason?" Howard said, grinning a little. I wasn't fooling him one bit.

"No, but I'd feel better if you did," I told him bluntly. Sudden bouts of altruism made me nervous.

"You're an interesting fellow, for one. Do you realize that of all the people I've met during the course of this war, you're the only one without an agenda?" Howard raised his arms over his head and stretched, then rubbed at the back of his neck with one hand. "It's amazing how many great and noble causes we have running around out there."

I snorted. "I have an agenda." I fully planned to kick Zechs' ass at the first opportunity.

"Is that what you call it?" Howard grinned at me, and I felt my ears turning red. "Well, I guess it doesn't matter." He sobered. "That was one helluva stunt you pulled in Sanc, you know."

I felt the hair prickle along my neck. Memories of fire and fear roughened my voice. "I guess. I don't remember much of it."

Howard snorted softly. "That's okay. Everyone else I talked to sure as hell does." He glanced over and gave me a crooked smirk. "Don't look so worried. I'm not going to bug you about it."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Look, I'll be straight with you." Howard leaned his elbows on the rail, looking across the deck at the blue-grey horizon. "I'm not sure you know exactly how much shit you've gotten yourself into. But you've gotten this far, and that says something."

_Yeah, it says I'm an idiot._ But I kept my mouth shut, not wanting to jinx it, and listened.

"You're a wild card, Otto. It's something you've got in common with the Gundams, y'know. Ever since the Arctic mission, anyway. The day they stopped taking orders was the day those kids got really dangerous. No one knows where they'll go or what they'll do next anymore--not even me." Howard gave me a sideways glance, then pushed up his sunglasses. "And that might be the only thing that could end this damn war."

"I don't understand. Are you telling me you can help me, or that you can't?" Frustration made my voice harsh. "Don't tell me you came all the way out here just to tell me I'm wasting my time."

"Hey, I said I'd help you. But I'm going to do it my way--and you're gonna have to trust me." That smug little smirk was back. I found it oddly reassuring. "Because let's face it, unless you have a spare Gundam tucked in your back pocket, you're not going to get anywhere near Zechs without getting blown into a million pieces by one side or the other. Space travel isn't too healthy these days."

"I, on the other hand, have a problem." Howard grimaced. "A problem by the name of White Fang. No one's paying attention to them yet, but that'll change soon enough, if my info is right. Look--OZ is on the way out, and unless I miss my guess, Romefeller isn't far behind. With the old Alliance gone, people are finally starting to realize how pointless this whole damn war is. But those stupid bastards--they don't care. And unless they're stopped, they'll refuse to let the fighting end. Not until they--" he stopped short, clamping his lips together in a thin, angry line.

"They what?"

Howard gave me a long look. "Until they do something really damn stupid." Apparently that was all he was going to say about it. "I'm doing my best to put a spike in their wheel, but Quinze knows me too well. He wouldn't let me or any of my boys within a parsec of his precious organization. "

I gave him a skeptical look. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"You're going after Zechs, right?" At my nod, Howard gave me a slow, toothy smile. "Well, I can guarantee you won't find him out where the Gundams are. But White Fang--they're gonna be in the middle of this war, I guarantee it. Scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours--and I think you'll get a lot closer to what you want this way."

The plot had thickened--either that, or Howard was shoveling something a helluva lot more pungent. It didn't take a genius to figure out that there was a small mountain of things he wasn't telling me about all this, and that it was probably a lot more dangerous than he was letting on.

"Let me get this straight. You're asking me--the world's worst snoop--to be your spy?" I shook my head. "Look Howard, I may be stupid, but I'm not suicidal." I tended to leave that to Zechs.

Howard snorted. "I need another spy inside White Fang like I need a hole in my head. That's not what I need you for."

"Then why?"

"Basically....I want as many pieces in place as I can for when Quinze makes his move." The cockiness had slipped away, and watching Howard, I got the feeling that this was as honest as I'd ever seen him. "I'm pretty sure I know what he's going to do--but I don't know *how* he's going to do it. So I'm trying to cover all my bases."

He gave me a weird, lopsided grin. "You're something I never counted on. So I'm hoping Quinze won't see you coming, either. Beyond that--"

Howard shook his head. "Do what you need to find Zechs. Anything else will be just icing on the cake, at least for me."

I didn't like it. I'd seen the intel, back when I still had the clearance, and I knew what White Fang did to spies--especially Earther spies. They weren't just radicals. They were fanatics. Still, if Howard was right....

He knew the Gundams, but I knew Zechs. The man was a magnet for trouble, and damn near the patron saint for lost causes. Right now the lines in this bloody war were changing every day, and I had no idea which side he'd end up on. Despite Howard's assurances, I had to face the possibility that hooking up with White Fang could very well mean that I'd end up on the wrong end of that damned dobergun. And that wasn't even counting the Gundams' propensity for blowing up everything that got in their way. The situation Howard wanted to put me in was about as safe as juggling old nitroglycerine--I had to be utterly, achingly careful, or I'd end up utterly and very dead. But as much as I didn't want to admit it, I'd never get in--or out--without his help.

But when it came right down to it, I'd be damned if I was going to get scared off now. Hell, I'd already cheated death twice. What were a few terrorists compared to that?

"All right. I'll do it."

* * *

I soon came to realize that infiltrating White Fang was a whole different level of espionage compared to my previous efforts. It was a good thing Howard knew what he was doing, because getting a native-born Earther like myself into White Fang was going to redefine the term 'deep cover'.  
Howard didn't waste any time, and his urgency seemed to transfer over to the Sweepers as well. I went from persona non grata to being rather forcibly adopted within the space of a week. There was no affection in it; this was simply the first practical step in my indoctrination. If I was going to pass as a colony-born engineer, I needed to eat like a colonist, sleep like a colonist, walk and talk like a colonist. A certain few mannerisms could be explained away as being acquired during an extended stay on Earth, but the rest of me had to pass the critical eyes of any potential White Fang 'comrades'.

The process was started on the Lachesis, but we didn't stay there for long. Howard made a beeline for Australia, and we abandoned the _Lachesis_in a berth in Adelaide in favor of a private colony-bound shuttle. I wasn't surprised--I'd already known Howard's connections were extensive. My indifference didn't last long though. Especially once we hit space, and I got my first look at the _Peacemillon_.

From the outside, it looked like nothing so much as a rich man's expensive yacht--sleek and pretty, sure, but nothing like the military cruisers I was used to. But inside--inside was a whole different story. Howard said she had taken him five years to build, and it was obvious he'd spared no expense. Under that pretty façade his ship had *teeth*, and power to spare--and I wanted nothing so much as to take her apart.

Howard was no fool. He saw that gleam in my eye and used it. Under the guise of an extended tour, he had me climbing over and through every inch of the _Peacemillon_, accompanied by the most hard-assed Sweepers he could find--crotchety old bastards who gave advice in between torrents of heavily accented profanity, and casually despised anything that wasn't built to withstand vacuum. I was no rookie when it came to space--there had been enough inter-colony jaunts in my excuse for a military career that I knew the drill: how to pilot, the allowances you had to make. But if there was one thing I learned from those old bastards, it was that there was a world of difference between traveling in space and living in it. A difference that I had to learn from the ground--or deck plating--up.

Weeks passed, and the Sweepers were relentless. My table manners were too prissy--_'whaddaya think you're doing, boy? You gotta *squeeze* the ferikkin' food pouches, not play patty cake with em!'_\--the way I walked too upright--_'lookit Mr. Military. You keep running round all like that, you gonna go straight inta the bulkhead next time the grav gets buggered'_\--and the only thing that seemed to even pass muster was my MS knowhow. Even that needed tweaking; I kept thinking in terms of Gs and stress tolerances that simply didn't matter in space. But...near as I could tell, Howard's total immersion tactics seemed to be working.

He didn't stop there, either. I had background info drummed into me until my brains were puddling out my ears. Where I had supposedly lived, worked, who I knew, who I didn't...faces and names and mannerisms and neighborhoods. Howard had it all concocted, right down to the last detail--and even he had to admit it wasn't as thorough as he would have liked.

"It's times like this I wasn't so damn personable," he admitted sourly in the middle of one of our briefings. "But I'm too well known around these parts. The Sweepers, too. So wherever we set you down, it's gotta be far away from us. If Quinze gets so much as a sniff of Sweeper anywhere in your direction, you'll get spaced faster than you can say 'holy corpsicle'."

"Even if they think I'm a colonist?" I asked, leaning back and kicking a heel against a bulkhead.

Howard snorted. "You can't lump colonists all in one pile like that, no matter what those idiots in White Fang think. Colonists have just as many grudges against each other as any Earther born. Just ask any L1 prime what he thinks about the L4 first families. I guarantee you that 'jumped up towel-heads' is probably the least of what you'll hear." He looked down at a piece of paper, made a face, then crumpled it up and threw it at the wastebasket. The paper ball floated casually past the target and joined its fellows on the floor. Howard didn't seem to notice. "That's why we picked L3. It's like L2, only cleaner, and all the colonists there are mutts. Europeans, Latinos, Chinese, Japanese, Americans, every kind of African you can think of...you name it, L3's got it. You don't have none of that preferred selection population crap the way you do with some of the other colonies. And it's not known for a lot of Sweeper activity like L2 is. We insert the right info into the right databases, scruff you up a bit and throw you on a tramp freighter...as long as you don't screw up, Quinze will never know we're involved."

"Yeah?" I raised a skeptical eyebrow. "If I'm going to be so damn invisible, then how the hell is White Fang going to pick me up?"

Howard looked smug. "Oh they'll pick you up. Because you're mister whiz-bang with Mobile Suits, and Quinze has *these*--" He tossed a stack of schematics across the desk. "--to play with. Romefeller's latest and greatest. They call 'em Mobile Dolls."

Stepping forward, I picked up the schematics and looked them over. There was a lot of information there--too much to take in at one go--along with some grainy photographs of the actual Suits, obviously taken from a distance. At first glance, they looked like nothing more interesting than a trimmed down Taurus. The body style was the same, modified for deep space. The interior specs told me the real story, though; the cockpit had been almost completely eliminated, except for a few leftover remnants. Romefeller's great leap forward wasn't in the hardware--it was in the software. Thanks to this new AI, they had taken the pilot out of the equation entirely.

Was this the straw that had broken the camel's back? Looking at these drones, I thought maybe it had been. No soldier likes to be made obsolete.

"Mobile Dolls, huh? I guess Romefeller finally has the toy soldiers it always wanted." I continued reading. These Dolls must have been what had given Romefeller such an edge on Earth--they could probably outgun and outflank normal infantry without even trying. "They're dreaming if they think drones are going to win against real pilots in a dogfight, though." Marquise wouldn't have been the only one to have a hissy fit--I doubted Khushrenada had planned for machines to do the fighting in his 'noble' war. I wasn’t sure I agreed or not, but it was pretty irrelevant as far as I was concerned. Either way, I could still appreciate the elegance of the design. These Mobile Dolls were a true breakthrough in terms of systems integration.

"Normally I'd agree with ya," Howard said soberly. "But they've got something else on their side. It's called the Zero system." I looked up, and watched him shift in his chair and frown. Whatever this system was, it had him worried. It took a lot to penetrate Howard's two-steps-ahead sense of superiority.

"Zero system? What's that--a new OS?"

Howard laughed harshly. "You could say that. It's not really accurate, though. The Zero system is a lot of things--but mostly it's our biggest mistake."

Putting the papers aside, I crossed my arms and leaned back, giving Howard my full attention. A few uncomfortable moments later, he continued.

"It was J's baby more than mine. But I had a hand in it." At my puzzled look, he backtracked a bit. "Jerrod Slator. Your other missing 'genius'. We all continued our work on developing MS technology, of course--wouldn't have Gundams otherwise. But J took a different tack. He was convinced that the pilot was half of the problem--that it was the pilot's response time that was holding back Suit development. So we worked the problem. Our solution was the Zero system. It's a tactical system that, once fully integrated, could analyze all incoming data and have the pilot react according to the best possible outcome. All of this would have happened in nanoseconds...before a normal person would have even realized that there was even a problem."

"You're telling me that you guys invented a system that could predict the future?" I asked, not bothering to hide my skepticism. "If it was so great, why hasn't anyone heard about it?"

"Because the project was a damn failure, that's why," Howard snapped. "We lost over ninety percent of the pilots who ever tried to use that thing. It drove them nuts. They'd snap and start shooting everything in sight." He sighed heavily, turning to look out through the unshielded window behind his desk. "We never did figure out for sure what the problem was. I always thought it was information overload, though. The poor bastards just couldn't handle all the data, the potentialities...all the things that could go wrong. When it came to the Zero system, ignorance was definitely bliss."

"Wonderful. And you think Quinze has somehow fixed that problem?" I scowled, not happy with the potential complication to my cover. Why was it anything having to do with those damn Gundams--not to mention Zechs--was so damn convoluted? "How did he get his hands on the system anyway?"

"That's a long story. And honestly, it's one you're better off not knowing," Howard said, his face grim. At my disgusted look, he shook his head stubbornly. "You don't have to trust me on this, Otto, but it's the truth. There are a lot of things out there right now that only a few people know about, and that's one of 'em. You haven't been playing these kinds of games long enough. If I tell you, you might let something slip, word would get back, and then-" Using thumb and forefingers, he mimed shooting himself in the temple. "-game over, pal."

"All right." I wasn't happy about it, and I knew it showed. But there was no point in pissing off Howard by pushing him on it. "I don't like it, but I'll take your word for it. So--White Fang has these Dolls. I take it you think they'll be hurting for engineers?"

"Yeah," Howard confirmed. "With all those Suits, normally they'd be desperate for pilots. But since the Dolls don't need pilots, the crunch comes down to support personnel. The systems on these MS are fairly specialized, and they're going to need top-notch people to keep them running once they hit combat. And believe me, they're expecting to."

"Perfect." I grimaced, pushing away from the bulkhead and kicking at a stray paper ball with the side of my foot. Nothing like the threat of imminent death to make a person sit up and pay attention. I didn't complain, though. Howard was just telling it like it was--and it wasn't like I hadn't known what I was getting into. Walking over to the port window, I finally said, "All right. Assuming that all goes as planned, once White Fang makes contact, what then?"

"What then?" Howard gave me a smirk, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. "After that, it's your show, bud. You're on your own; I can't touch you once you're inside, much less help ya." He leaned back, the chair creaking under his weight, and laced his fingers over his middle. "I hope you know what you're doing."

I looked out at the stars, and all the cold space between them. "Yeah. Me too."

* * *

  
L3 was pretty much just as Howard had said. As a favored transfer point between Earth and the other colonies, a large part of L3 was devoted completely to shipping, and the war hadn't slowed that down much. Stepping off the mining freighter, duffle in hand, the words that came to mind were 'busy' and...well, 'busy'. The place was crowded, especially by Earth standards--there were hundreds of people everywhere, towing freight, doing maintenance, walking and shouting and just generally getting in the way with very little regard for the personal space of either ships or people. Strike that. The ships got more respect than people did.

He hadn't been kidding about the mixed population, either. I'm pretty sure I heard at least fifteen different languages (not counting Standard) just by crossing from one end of the hangar to the other. I did my best not to keep my head down and not gawk like a typical Earther rube. It helped that I'd done colony trips before, so I at least knew where to go and who to check with. But I'd never quite realized how much extra space colonists had given OZ officers until I wasn't one anymore. It didn't take me long to get fed up with it, and about the third time I received an elbow in the ribs I started doing some shouldering of my own, boots clomping along the decking.

My newly-minted credentials stood up to the test. Somehow I managed to get through customs and quarantine without starting a fight, and it was with a definite sense of déjà vu that I went hunting for lodging and the other basic necessities of life. I wasn't planning on staying here that long, but White Fang didn't know that. I tried not to stop and think about what I was doing too much. When I did, it felt like this whole thing was just one big inside joke--me, former OZ flunky and current idiot, playing the starring role as yet another version of myself. This time I was a disaffected colony engineer; all part of Howard's 'keep-it-simple-stupid' idea of infiltration.

Settling in, I did my best not to pay too much attention to the various Gundam rumors floating around the colony. I had the feeling that too much attention in that direction would definitely be unhealthy, especially around here. Instead I kicked back and acted like any grease monkey between jobs and with money to burn would, and spent most of my time acquainting myself with L3's nightlife. Most of it was pretty rough and ready: this part of L3 didn't have much in the way of pretensions. It knew who it needed to cater to--the thousands of dockhands, pilots, engineers, mechanics and scrub workers that kept the place alive. All the better for me. It was easy enough to be unremembered among all the comings and goings, and easier still to establish the kind of temporary hangout I needed. Even my nonexistent acting skills could stretch to a little gambling, a lot of drinking, and some judicious mutterings about 'those OZ bastards trying to tell us what we can do' alongside the usual male bonding bullshit. Even if I never managed to make contact with White Fang, I was still several steps closer to chasing down Marquise. I was in space, not to mention a major colony cluster, and while I hadn't heard much about 'Ambassador Peacecraft' lately, my instincts agreed with Howard. The real fight was out here, in space.

* * *

  
"You Adler?"

I glanced over at the man, giving him an unfriendly once-over. "Maybe. Who the hell are you?" I threw another dart at the board, my low-G aim perfected by endless games on the Peacemillon. The dart flew in an unnaturally straight line, smacking solidly into the board and giving me another meager ten points. My opponent--Raz, a systems engineer from the _Mickey V_\--hooted in derision and stepped up for his turn. Giving him a one-finger salute, I leaned against the bar and looked back at the new guy.

"The name's Johansson." The man was scruffy and anonymous in the grey-bluish coveralls used by mechanics everywhere. There was grime worn in on his hands, and stains on those coveralls. The olive skin and curly hair didn't match up with the name, but in a place like L3, that wasn't unexpected. Still, I didn't like him. The clothes were a little too new, and there weren't any worn out spots or frayed edges, despite the dirt. His face was the same way: stubbled and ferrety, with eager little eyes. "I'm looking for a first class engineer, and I've heard you're the man to find."

"Yeah? Who told you that?" I watched Raz throw, showing only the barest shred of interest in the conversation.

"Oh, word gets around." The little ferret-bastard was being coy now, and I gave him a disgusted look. He must have realized he was losing his audience, and he scrambled to make up for it. "We're hiring good mechanical engineers. Especially ones with experience dealing with MS. It's good pay and steady work. And a big improvement over hopping from freighter to freighter."

He had my full attention now, but not for the reasons he thought. There was no way this bastard was White Fang. He was way too blatant. He bothered me in other ways, too. He was trying to look like just another tech, but he was cocky enough to pass for one of Oz's little lord-officers...and he was just a little too pleased with himself.

"Good pay, huh?" I watched his face carefully, waiting for the flinch. "Let me see your arm." I didn't what for him to finish his sputtered, "--what? I don't--" I just grabbed the hand he had draped along the bar and shoved his sleeve up in one motion.

"What the hell--?" Johanssen made an attempt to yank his hand back, his other one hovering over a pocket. He must have decided his odds weren't good, though, because he didn't go for whatever he had.

I ignored his screeching, and surveyed the unmarked skin of his forearm. Then I dropped his hand and turned away. "I don't think so." I didn't bother to check his other arm; I was pretty sure what I'd find. Raz sniggered, and there was a low mutter of agreement from nearby bargoers. They'd seen the same thing I had. They knew what it meant.

Earthside, it wasn't that unusual for civvies to be clean. There were a lot of hidebound bureaucracies in the old Earth Alliance who still frowned on that sort of thing. But it was a different story for spacers, especially the enlisted variety. Everyone had tattoos, something saying where they'd been, where they'd served, what ship they belonged to--hell, on some colonies, they'd even made it mandatory as a form of alternate ID. Some of the more isolated spacers--the miners, the engineers, the freighter crews--had taken it a step further. Their entire career was inked into their skin, from first berth to last. I was no spacer, but even I had an Academy tattoo, now camouflaged with synthskin and temporary ink into a L3 enlisted mark, courtesy of Howard.

Out here, people who didn't have tattoos were usually people who had something to hide. A person who stayed clean was someone who didn't want anyone digging up the past: criminals, gunrunners, gangers and the like, trying not to be connected to the dirt they dealt with. Given what ferret-face was recruiting for, I was betting on some branch of mafia. With the Alliance in disarray and OZ distracted by infighting, they'd probably gotten their hands on a bunch of ancient, black-market Mobile Suits. They wouldn't be sniffing around for someone with my skills, otherwise. Unfortunately for them, they weren't what I was fishing for.

Johanssen's face was dark. He probably didn't get rejected much. "You haven't even heard what I'm offering, and you're already turning me down? That's not very bright."

"Maybe so. But I'd have to be pretty stupid to sign up to work on what you guys probably have." I gave him a scornful look. "I'm willing to bet fifty creds you don't have anything better than a few old Mark II Leos, do you?" From the sputtering, it sounded like I would have won that bet. "What are you trying to do, bore me to death? Plus, you guys have a lousy pension plan," I added as an afterthought.

"We'll pay you--"

I cut him off before he could even start.

"Forget it. I take jobs on my terms, and I don't need yours." It was my turn at the dartboard, but I didn't want to turn my back on Johanssen. If he decided to take this personally, I wanted at least a shot at ducking.

Fortunately for me, Johanssen remembered he was a pro. He visibly pulled himself back, face still red with anger, and took a deep breath. "If that's what you want, then I won't stop you. But I should warn you that you're making a big mistake." The threat had all the subtlety of a kick to the head. The bastard shrugged, trying to make like he didn't care. "You're not the only engineer on L3, after all."

"You're right, I'm not," I said, indifferent. Stepping up the mark, I hefted a dart, eyeing the board. I could see Johanssen still glaring at me out of the corner of my eye. After a moment, he turned on his heel and stalked away without a word. I snorted and threw, ignoring the sideways stares of some of the bystanders. Just my luck--I go fishing for White Fang, and end up with the mob. Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.

* * *

It took a few more job offers--legitimate ones, most of them--before I finally landed the one I wanted. Both Howard and I had underestimated how valuable an engineer with the right certs and a good rep was on L3, and I'd had to turn down some pretty good berths. So far I'd managed to pass off my refusals as a guy who didn't want to cut his playtime short, but sooner or later I knew I'd have to take a job. It would be too suspicious if I didn't. Besides, my money wouldn't last forever.

The war had swung back into space, and in a big way. Howard had been right--White Fang was a threat, and they proved it in one big stroke, taking out Fortress Barge and the OZ-controlled lunar base in an orchestrated rebellion that had all eyes turned towards the colonies once more. For a while I was sure I'd lost my chance, now that White Fang had gone public. Hell, I'd almost resigned myself to sitting on the sidelines with the rest of the colonists, watching the war rage around us.

My grumblings must have fallen on the right ears, though. In a way, the mafia fiasco had done me a favor--I was now more than a little infamous among certain circles. That got me a early morning vid-call from a woman I'd never seen before. Forget that gentler sex bullshit: this woman had a face like granite, wary black eyes, and she wasn't bothering to smile much.

"You Adler?"

Déjà vu all over again. I scratched at my hair and yawned, leaning backward. "Yeah. Who're you?"

"The name's Isaacs--Miriam Isaacs. I'm the chief engineer of the Libra." My eyebrows shot up, and I didn't even bother to try to hide my surprise. I'd heard of the _Libra_\--who hadn't? It was only the biggest, baddest and newest bit of hardware left over from OZ's push into space, and White Fang's newest prize. With Fortress Barge and the lunar base gone, the half-finished _Libra_ was now their flagship. That single battle station elevated their status from vocal terrorist group to a powerful faction in their own right. Opinions were mixed from the colonies about whether this was a good thing or not. Me...well, knowing what I did about White Fang, I just tried not to think about it too hard.

"It's an honor, ma'am. What can I do for you?" For once I was being honest. If the captain of a ship was God, then the chief engineer was the archangel Michael. When things went wrong, they were the ones that decided whether or not a spacer crew lived or died. A chief engineer for a battle station the size of the _Libra_ was damn near the undisputed master of his--or her--own domain, and it was beyond rare to have one calling around for new recruits. Usually that was left to the clerking types.

"I'm hiring on some additional crew--good colony engineers to help finish the work OZ started. We need tactical systems specialists, especially ones with military know-how. Word has it you've got what it takes for the job," came the reply, blunt and unadorned. She didn't appear overly enthusiastic at the prospect, though I couldn't tell whether it was me in particular or just the whole general concept of training in new crew.  
"_Libra_\--yeah, I'd heard about it. You guys were pretty amazing, taking it away from OZ like that." I shrugged, trying not to sound overeager, even as my heart thumped harder. This was probably my only shot.

"Well, you've got good credentials, and your previous captain says good things about you. If you want the job, come down to the Belt of Orion, dock R-317, sector twelve, and we'll talk terms." She looked down, off the camera, and there was the sound of shuffling paperwork. "Unless you've got something better to do?" From the look on her face, I'd damn well better not.

"I can be there in a couple of hours. Will that work?"

"That will be fine. Ask any of the crew--they'll show you where to go." She waved a dismissive hand. "See you there."

The screen blipped and went dark. "Doesn't waste time, does she?" I muttered at it, rubbing both hands over my face. Then I pushed myself out of the chair and headed for the closet. No time to celebrate: in a couple hours, I'd better be ready to walk into the lion's den.

* * *

  
Three days later and I was stepping foot on the _Libra_. It was now official--Adler, engineer second class, was now part of White Fang. That part of the recruitment was a funny process; I'd never asked, and no one really offered. It just seemed to be assumed, though I wasn't too dense to notice the sharp eye the older rebels kept on the new recruits. Still, the assumption seemed to be that all the colonists who'd joined up at this point were true believers, or at the very least had a healthy dislike for OZ and the Earth Alliance. Sloppy of them, but it made my job easier.

And to a certain amount, it was true. I had to work hard not to be appalled by the sheer amount of hate directed towards OZ, the Alliance, and damn near anything that came from Earth. It was pervasive, not to mention borderline irrational. Even the milder voices of my fellow techies got progressively more angry inside the closed environment of the Libra. Every new sally by OZ was seen as a mortal insult towards all colonists, pushing the crew to redouble their efforts. The worst offenders were the Quinze, Sedici, and their inner circle--they redefined the word 'fanatical'. The rest of the crew wasn't quite that bad, but the attitude was everywhere. It scared me sometimes, how easy it was to fall in and spout the party line. It was like an invisible, rancid stink--one that you couldn't smell anymore once you'd been saturated in it long enough. I felt more like a traitor now than I ever had as part of OZ. The constant tension did nothing to improve my temper, which probably wasn't a bad thing. It cut down on the stupid questions, at least.

Isaacs, the chief engineer, was another chip off the Quinze block, though not quite as bad. She was a mean old biddy with a serious grudge against Romefeller, but at least she had the sense not to proselytize to the rest of her crew. Politics were all well and good, but they wouldn't get the _Libra_ finished, and any grease monkey caught ranting instead of working was certain to get his ass kicked. Unfortunately for me, after the first few weeks of scut duty, I wasn't working on the station itself anymore. Instead I was working on their Mobile Suits--the new model Virgos and Tauruses--and that meant I had to deal the mess left behind by that fuckhead Tsuberov.

Tsuberov himself was dead, killed in the battle over the lunar base. His crew wasn't, on the other hand, and they reminded me of some of the worst civilian engineers I'd had to work with, back in my Alliance days--the ones so convinced of their own brilliance that any common sense had to be pounded forcibly in between their ears. The Dolls had been these guys' pet project for quite some time, and they never wasted an opportunity to remind us newbies of that fact, or how 'revolutionary' they were. They were also nominally in charge, which was probably the only thing that saved them. Anyone else would have had their head bashed in by a bolt hammer by the end of the first week; unfortunately, we needed the fuckers.

The Dolls themselves weren't quite as high maintenance as their development crew, but they weren't exactly easy to handle either. The Taurus was a pretty rugged MS. It had to be, in order to deal with the extremes of outer space. Nothing radical in the way weapons systems or engines had been added, so all we had to deal with were the usual glitches and workarounds. The hardware for the Zero system, though...that was a bitch and a half to integrate. Response time was fast--too fast. The native microprocessors for the Taurus simply couldn't keep up, and the resulting bottlenecks meant that the system choked and lagged. A lot. Adding more microprocessors to handle the load was pointless--the Zero system chewed them up and spit them out too. And if there was a way to throttle back the Zero system, I sure as hell couldn't find it. Ignoring Sedici's hissy fit every time the idea got brought up, the plain truth was that my eyes started to cross whenever I even started looking at the architecture in that thing.

It took us a good deal of blood, sweat, and elbow grease to find a workaround on those damn things, not to mention every ounce of programming skill the _Libra's_ techs could offer. We ended up stripping out every bit of leftover code that had been designed with a pilot in mind: environmental systems, viewscreens and pilot interfaces, even Terran-based tactical systems. The job was tedious and tricky; there were a lot of subsystems in there that we had to keep intact, even as we cut away at all the deadwood around them. For instance, the Dolls didn't need to monitor or pressurize a cockpit for a pilot anymore. However, they did need to regulate internal temperatures on processors, vernier systems, and so on. Deactivating one system meant we ended up deactivating most of the other, and separating the two was a royal pain in the ass. It was tempting to try and sabotage our work--given the complexity of what we were doing, I might have gotten away with it. But I didn't dare, not with Quinze and Sedici breathing down our necks like a pair of twin vultures. Instead, I kept my head down like a good little flunky, and waited for my chance.

* * *

  
Not all of the former OZ crew had defected to the side of White Fang. There had been a good chunk that had fought the good fight, right until the end--and they'd paid for it. Most of them had been executed right there on the _Libra_.

I remember repairing a section of power conduit, up in a little hallway off of the secondary bridge. The wall was still flecked with rusty-red stains from where part of the original crew had made their last stand. There was a section of alloy paneling that we had to remove, pockmarked with dents, all around waist high. No one talked about it. We just kept working, eyes sliding away from each other. My rebel 'comrades' didn't want to know about the people who had died there in that hallway, their loyalty rewarded by being forced to their knees and gunned down like dogs. White Fang didn't bother with prisoners. Especially ones with no political value.

It was selfish of me, but I was glad I hadn't been there. I wasn't sure what I would have done, if I'd been given the order to turn against my fellow officers. I hadn't known those men, but I found myself angry on their behalf anyway. No one deserved to die like that.

White Fang did have other POWs, though; valuable ones. They were also the ones that gave me the chance I'd been waiting for.

Somehow Quinze had managed to get his hands on the architects behind the _Libra_. They were isolated from the rest of the crew, of course--Quinze wasn't taking any chances. It didn't matter, though; gossip flies faster than any Gundam. These guys were bona fide geniuses, even as prisoners. Hardly a day went by without someone babbling away about something incredible they'd done, so I decided to get a closer look. The enemy of my enemy, and all that. Volunteering to work on the weapons array crew was pathetically easy. Most of us were pulling double duty at that point, and one more engineer running between sections wasn't anything new. It helped that the weapons array was giving the White Fang engineers fits. What with Quinze demanding progress reports almost hourly, they were happy with any help they could get. As for me--well, who needed sleep anyway?

Once I got a good look at Quinze's prize prisoners, it didn't take me long to recognize them. The files I had on the Tallgeese had included security clearances...and pictures. Pictures now over twenty years old, but those guys had been a pretty motley lot. They were going by initials now, apparently: 'Professor G', 'Master O', that sort of thing. But trust me, faces--and noses--like theirs are hard to forget. Of them all, Professor Slator was the hardest to recognize, what with all the prosthetics. But there was no mistake--this was Howard's partner in crime, Dr. J. And if I had one Gundam designer here.... I eyed the others, watching them work. It didn't take much to convince me Quinze had managed to snag them all.

Problem was, there was no way I could talk to them. Quinze apparently had a healthy appreciation for his fellow terrorist masterminds. They were kept under guard 24/7, even while working. Any contact beyond the basics--'hand me that', 'go over there and give me those readings'--would no doubt be overheard and reported, which was the last thing I wanted. I stewed over the problem for quite a while as I worked, watching their progress. In the meantime, Walker's maverick geniuses didn't disappoint. I learned more in those few weeks then I did in the entire rest of my military career, just by following in their footsteps. I would have cheerfully gnawed off my left arm just for the opportunity to actually talk with them about their Gundam designs. The things I could have learned...these guys were light years ahead of OZ. Instead, I had to content myself with picking apart every little design change they made, scavenging the scraps of engineering genius they left behind.

Which is how I found out they were sabotaging the _Libra_, even as they built it.

The first time I found the problem, even I wasn't sure what I was seeing. It wasn't an obvious design flaw by any means--even the other engineers hadn't picked up on it. Hell, the only reason I did was probably the time I'd spent working with--and around--Howard's lunatic designs. It was a riff off of one of his power conversion workarounds. But this time, instead of focusing and regulating the power necessary to fuel the _Libra_'s main cannon, the system was inverted--designed so that the regulator circuit for the main array would overheat, frying any number of fragile components in the process. It was slick. It was subtle. And even seeing what I had, I had the hardest time believing it wasn't an accidental oversight. So I decided to test my theory. I went in, and rewired the regulator circuit back the right way--Howard's way, making sure I used the exact same configuration they'd used on the Tallgeese. Then I sat back, fiddled around with another part of the system and waited to see how the geniuses would react.

It didn't take them long to find it. The round little guy--H--was the first to run into my little message. I had to give him credit; that guy was cool as a cucumber. He never even blinked. For a moment I wondered if he'd even noticed. Then he called J over into a little huddle over the power conduits, and I knew they had.

I suppressed a smirk. They were working on the regulator circuits again, along with a great deal of associated grumbling I was too far away to hear. But they were glancing sideways, looking at the crew around them--wondering who'd left the message, no doubt.

I knew it wouldn't take them long to figure it out. I still desperately wanted to make contact. Considering the deep game I was playing, it would have been nice to know I wasn't stepping on any toes. But since that was impossible, I settled for what I could do. Using their work, I tweaked their subtle little flaws deep inside the heart of the weapons array--and the next time I made sure to do it right in front of J. When he shot me a sharp glance, I met it levelly, trying to convey with my eyes what I couldn't show on my face. Then he looked back down at what I was doing--tying in another data switch to the regulator, right in line to get fried when the thing blew. He let me finish, saying only, "Make sure you power down before to wire up the polymer connections."

That was all I needed; I knew he understood. When you got right down to it, secret signals and cryptic codes weren't necessary. All they needed to know was that I was willing to aid and abet their sabotage any way possible.

* * *

  
With the Gundam scientists on board, I was starting to believe we could spike White Fang's wheel but good. And then I saw Zechs--and all my clever little plans fell flat.

For once, I hadn't been working on either the weapons array or the MDs. Instead I was chest-deep inside a Virgo, learning the ins and outs of these new weapons systems that OZ had come up with. Even with the Zero System and the MDs, Quinze wasn't quite ready to convert all his regular Suits over just yet. The man wasn't stupid, and he had no intentions of putting all his eggs in one basket. The Dolls may have been our first priority, but they weren't our only one.

End result? I got lucky, and was safely in the background when Quinze decided to give his new 'leader' the grand tour.

I'd been concentrating on what I was doing, and it was the sudden lull in the shouted conversations around me that clued me in to what was going on. I'd looked up, fingers tangled in wiring and a probe between my teeth. Then I got my first glimpse of that distinctive blond head--sans bucket, for once--and froze solid.

I wasn't the only one staring. There was a ripple effect through pretty much every grease monkey and tech in the joint, as they gradually realized that Someone Important had just arrived to inspect their work. I'm sure Marquise's looks didn't hurt much, either. Conversations stopped, and the whispers started...they knew him from the colony vidcasts, knew him as Milliardo Peacecraft, 'ambassador for peace'. There were enough ex-military scattered around the place, though, that Zechs' OZ origins wouldn't stay secret for long. And maybe that's what Quinze wanted.

As for me, I was still struggling with the concept of Zechs *here*. Right in front of me, in the Libra--and part of White Fang. Of all the scenarios I'd run through in my head, all the places I thought he might have disappeared to...I'd never thought he'd be here. Much less joined up with the very terrorists we had spent so much time fighting. I watched him walk around the MDs with Quinze, chatting like they were old friends, and felt....betrayed.

* * *

  
I couldn't sleep that night. Lying awake, staring at the underside of the bunk above me, I tried to figure out what I was going to do. From the beginning I had assumed that once I'd found Zechs, I'd find my answers, whether I liked them or not. Now...Zechs was literally within arm's reach. All I had to do was walk up to him and ask.

Then what?

That was the million-credit question. It was obvious that Zechs hadn't recognized me today. Part of that was no doubt due to me doing my damnedest not to get noticed, but the other.... Zechs wasn't just part of White Fang. He was the leader--the new voice of the resistance, Quinze's charismatic figurehead. What the hell did he think he was doing? First OZ, then 'Ambassador Peacecraft'.... and now this. There was something seriously wrong with all this. Was Zechs trying to infiltrate White Fang like I had? But why? What could he hope to accomplish?

The Zechs that I'd known would never have joined up with an asshole like Quinze. Something had changed for him, and I didn't know what that was. He'd already proved he had a nasty habit of treating subordinates as expendables. If I revealed who I was, and cornered Zechs...would he do it again? Throw me to the wolves? All it would take was two words--OZ spy--and I'd be sucking vacuum.

Did I even stand a chance of bringing Zechs to his senses? For as long as I'd known him, Marquise had always gone his own way...but he'd never been a traitor. Did he hate Khushrenada so much now that he'd set himself against Earth out of spite? It was the only thing I could think of that made sense. And if it was true, then I stood a snowball's chance in hell of stopping him.

So where did that leave me? With my ass in one hell of a crack, that's where. I'd already committed myself--there was no way to back out of White Fang now. Not without raising a lot of questions I didn't have answers to. I couldn't go back--and I couldn't go forward, not until I knew Zechs' true intentions. I didn't like it, but the only thing I could do was sit tight and try to formulate a contingency plan or three. I just hoped to hell that my guardian angel was paying a bit more attention this time around.

* * *

  
Time was running out, and I'd pussyfooted around long enough. If the Tallgeese had been there, I would have been tempted to monkey with it. But Zechs had apparently traded up somewhere along the way; he'd brought along a new red MS I didn't recognize. That Suit had its own team of engineers, which was fine by me. At the risk of sounding superstitious, that MS seemed....off, somehow. I didn't want to have anything to do with it. Besides, working on Zechs’ MS would mean I’d likely get recognized, and I couldn’t take that kind of risk.

Instead, I escalated my own sabotage attempts, doing all the damage I could without getting caught. The MDs weren't easy to tweak, but I managed to make them at least a bit slower, a little less responsive...giving the Earth forces whatever edge I could. There were also a couple of Tauruses left over--lemons, basically, who for one reason or another we could never get quite up to battle-ready status. Picking out the worst of them, I threw every spare moment I had into bringing it online. We'd never managed to successfully integrate the Zero system in, so I shut it down, leaving the hardware where it was and loading up the original OS. I'd cobbled in some of the Virgos' advanced shielding systems during the retrofit, loading it up on the armor and defensive capabilities. It was a stone bitch--but in the end I had a battle-worthy Taurus that no one knew about. It was my ace in the hole. I was going to do my best to keep it that way, even though I hoped I never had to use it.

The Libra had barely been finished before Zechs decided to throw us into the fray. I wasn't surprised--where Marquise goes, trouble follows. Though in all honesty, it was OZ who forced his hand. Some bright boys in OZ had decided that the only way to take care of White Fang was to take a colony hostage. So they landed a couple squads of Tauruses on L3's C421, took control, and issued White Fang an ultimatum: Surrender, or we blow up the colony.

Where had I heard that one before?

It didn't work any better this time around, either. Any hopes I'd had that Marquise would be reasonable curled up and died an early death once I heard his response. There was no way he was going to back down now. Not with Quinze behind him, busy throwing more rocket fuel on the fire. I don't even think the word 'surrender' is in Zechs' vocabulary. But then, I didn't think that 'genocide' was in there either--which is why I couldn't believe it when we received orders to target the _Libra's_ main array on the colony. It even seemed to shake up my fellow rebels a bit. Killing Ozzies and Earthers was one thing, but these were *colonists*. Weren't they the ones we were supposedly fighting for?

But they followed orders anyway. There was nothing I could do--I wasn't assigned anywhere near the main array, and there was no heroic gesture I could have made that would have stopped them from firing. All I could do was pray that the flaws the Gundam scientists had built into the system would somehow be enough to keep C421 from being destroyed.

Someone must have been listening. Everybody and their cousin decided to show up to defend L3--including several Gundams, though it was anyone's guess who they were really fighting. Khushrenada denounced the OZ troops responsible for taking the colony hostage as rebels and mutineers. That was good enough for Zechs, apparently, and the _Libra_ fired--but at the Earth, not L3.

It was a obvious challenge to Romefeller, not to mention Khushrenada--Zechs' little way of saying 'Come and get me.' When Marquise wanted to throw down the gauntlet, he did it in a big way. The fact that he'd nearly annihilated an entire colony, not to mention a stray Gundam or two, didn't seem to matter much.

The shit hit the fan fast after that.

Those of us belowdecks weren't lucky enough to have front-row seats to whatever posturing was going on in the bridge, but there were computers everywhere, most of them tied into the sensor network. We could see the troop numbers OZ was moving into place around MO-II. Even I was intimidated--stationed on the main power relay for the weapons systems, I had to fight to keep my hands steady. I'd never seen that many mobile suits in one place: there were thousands of them, with more showing up all the time. That was a helluva lot of firepower...and it was all aimed at us.

The air was tight. The engineers down at the main array kept throwing each other uneasy sideways glances. Techs, even spacer techs, aren't used to being on the front lines. As impressive as this battle station was, my 'comrades' were starting to realize that there was no way out if the battle turned against us. No one abandoned post--it would have been pointless anyway--but there was a new tang of fear in the air. I took a certain amount of satisfaction out of that. It's one thing to talk about taking down OZ. But when you're facing down several battalions of MS, with Khushrenada himself leading the way, suddenly it doesn't seem quite so easy.

Zechs didn't waste time. Once OZ's forces were lined up nice and neat, the orders came down to fire the main array at MO-II. I lagged behind as much as I dared, but I didn't have my finger on the button--another engineer named Steadman did. Zechs' earlier trigger-happy ways had stood the White Fang crew in good stead, unfortunately. They were able to prep the cannon for firing in a minimum of time. All I could do from my station was tweak the power settings to deliver the maximum amount of power needed for firing--and hopefully create the maximum amount of feedback to fry that damn thing out of existence.

Steadman was doing final checks, the conscientious bastard. "Main relays?"

"All green!"

"Targeting?" That question was almost ridiculous. MO-II made a damn big target.

"Targeting at convergence point thirty-four point oh-six-one. Coordinates confirmed from bridge. Target set!" The targeting officer was an engineer I'd never worked with before, pale-faced and determined. Scuttlebutt had it that the last targeting officer had manage to fry himself on amped-up board.This must be his relief; he didn't look any too happy to be put in the hot seat.

"All right. Energy levels at output levels and holding." Steadman entered the last command. Even from where I was, I could see his hand hesitate a bit--but only for a bit--before hitting 'return'. "We’re ready to go!"

There was an audible hum as the firing sequence started, drawing power from Libra's main reactor core and building it up to the critical mass necessary for discharge. Even behind all the shielding, I could feel my hair prickle under the static charge building up in the air. I had to fight the sudden urge to pray. Instead I watched my console with hot eyes, muttering under my breath. "...come on, you bitch. Don't disappoint me now...."

The array fired. All the voltage in the station dropped, lights flickering and backups kicking on as the Libra shuddered. The residuals of the blast whited out our sensors for a full five seconds, leaving us blind in the aftermath. Which was just as well, because the firing crew had their own shit to deal with as the cannon overheated.

Sparks flew everywhere as boards blew, taking fragile solid- and poly-state circuitry with them. Steadman was on the speaker, attempting to control the chaos--"Fire control team to the main array! Cut the power now!" I cheerfully disregarded that order, fumbling around in what I hoped was a convincing panic-stricken state. Cutting the power to the nonessentials, I left the main conduits open to burn through relay switch after relay switch. With everything else going on--they'd expected something like this, but things were still blowing out faster than they could keep up--Steadman never noticed, and it took several minutes for the crew chief on the relay team to catch on.

"Adler! What the fuck do you think you're doing?! You fucking idiot--shut it down! Shut it down now!"

"Sorry, sir!" Busted--but the damage had been done. I started flipping switches, cutting the main array out of the network. There was smoke everywhere. Paneling was being ripped out by frantic techs as they tried to assess just how much they'd lost, and whether it needed to be fixed or replaced. From the damage visible on the main floor, Zechs wasn't going to get a second shot out of this thing any time soon. And as the sensors cleared and data began rushing in, the news was better than I'd dared hope. Somehow--maybe due to a last-minute course change, maybe due to targeting's jitters--the main blast had missed the center of MO-II. Instead it had hit to one side, carving a good chunk out of the far edge of the satellite. The damage was still severe, but nowhere near what it could have been. If the blast had hit head-on, the way Zechs had intended, OZ would have lost its staging point, and MO-II would be nothing more than an expanding cloud of space debris.

Quinze was probably having a stroke right about now. I hoped so, at least.

With the main array down, White Fang would be forced to deploy their Mobile Dolls. I could already hear the priority orders rattling through the coms to the launch bay crews. Backup teams and pilots were running through the halls--at a guess, Quinze had ordered them out too as fringe support. Given the kind of battle White Fang was facing, there was no point in keeping them in reserve. No resource would be wasted. Hell, with the Dolls now going into action, even those of us who'd worked on them had been reassigned. There would be no hot turns, not on this one. The Mobile Dolls would keep going until they'd either won or were turned into scrap metal. And if OZ managed to win here, then White Fang was done with. Everyone knew it, especially Quinze.

None of us knew how long the battle would last. We also didn't have the luxury of sitting hunched over the viewscreens. The main array wasn't going to fix itself, and unless I missed my guess, the _Libra_ was going to see some face-to-face action herself soon. Her defenses were pretty solid, but without the main array she didn't have much in the way of teeth--it was only a matter of time before some enterprising David decided to take on this particular Goliath.

In the meantime, Stedman had finally gotten his head screwed on straight. "Rossi, Beeldt! Start patching the feedback circuitry." The guy was turning into a regular tin-plated dictator. "Adler! Grab a crew and start hauling spares from storage. Get what you need, but fix those main conduits-- the backups aren't enough for this kind of power load."

Considering that I had no intention of doing any such thing, I thought my response was pretty mild. "On it." I snagged a snot-nosed rookie tech. "You--Bobby."

"It's Harry."

"Right--Harry." At this point his name could be pieface for all I cared. "You're coming with me." I cast an eye around for a couple other moronically-inclined individuals. "You! And you! You guys as well." They were older engineers, a man and a woman I knew only by reputation. They had know-how, but no creativity. In a pinch, they'd have to do.

I dragged them off with a minimum of quibbling. The main array was the minimum distance necessary from the main engines that supplied it with power, but that was still a good amount of hallway--and conduit--that had to be covered. The storage lockers were placed at points along the line, which made finding the tools and spare parts we needed easier than I wanted it to be. I had to curb my own impulse to organize my little crew to do what needed to be done. Instead I let them bumble around on their own, attempting repairs and scrambling for parts. When they did come for instructions, I tried to be as vague and confusing as possible...which for me wasn't very. But hey, at least it was an attempt. It grated more than I thought, being a saboteur instead of the engineer I was trained to be. But I’d never let my pride get in the way of what needed to be done, and I wasn’t about to start now.

One of the conduit relays was right next to the primary launch bay catapults. Through the bay doors, I could see distant lights flashing as MS were moved into launch position...including Zechs' Epyon. Watching that thing get prepped, I had to fight off my misgivings. I'd known Zechs would decide to be in the thick of things. Khushrenada had taken his challenge, after all. He was probably figuring on killing the general personally--and there wasn't damn thing I could do about it. Admitting that left a bitter taste in my mouth, but I had to face facts. I'd been chasing after my answers, but it would never matter to Zechs whether I got them or not. Marquise had always gone his own way.

I turned back to my work. There was an eerie silence once the last MS was launched--a waiting kind of silence. Outside, men were fighting and dying. In here--all we could do was work, and wait.

We were about midway through the repairs when the first buzz started filtering down through the crew. Gundams. The word hopped from man to man, and all of a sudden the stress levels jumped about three hundred percent. The Gundams had made it abundantly clear that they weren't siding with anyone, much less White Fang. But that made them no less of a threat. Howard's wild cards were living up to the name.

"Gundams, sir?" the kid asked me, trying to find some reassurance. "Do you think they're here to take down OZ?"

I shrugged. "Who knows? Better keep your eye on what you're doing instead, Bobby--"

"_Harry_."

"--Harry, or you're gonna blow off your hand." I tapped the live circuit he had been just about to cut. "Worry about this instead."

"Shit!" Embarrassed, the kid ducked his head and made like he was busy isolating the circuit. I wished I could take my own advice, but that was impossible. The Gundams--I'd been through too many close encounters. I *knew* what they could do, and the idea had sent a spike of ice straight down my spine. Getting out of here had suddenly gotten a lot more urgent.

Apparently I wasn’t the only who thought so, either. Shortly after that, the Libra’s main engines kicked in, and we started to move. This deep in the heart of her, there was no way of knowing if we were moving towards the battle or away from it, but we could all feel the teeth-rattling bass rumble of those thrusters through the deck plating. Leaving my crew to their fumblings, I headed over to the nearest com station.

Switching over to my crew chief, I toggled it open. “It’s Adler. What’s going on?” After a few seconds, the guy came into view on the little screen and scowled at me.

“Can’t you see I’m fucking busy, Adler? We’re moving the Libra to a better position, and that’s all you need to know. Now get back to work!”

“Yes, sir.” I hit the ‘off’ switch, muttering under my breath. “Fucking prick.” I hated being left in the dark. But there was nothing I could do about it now, and I hated that even more.

Bobby and the others had almost made it to the reactor on the repairs. I was headed back their way, still trying to figure a way out of this mess, when the proximity alarms went off. Then came the first shuddering impact, knocking us off our feet, and the one thing you never, ever want to hear in space, the horrible, screaming crunch of metal tearing—

—and then a second later, the world ended.

* * *

  
Or at least it seemed like it.

I woke up coughing, hacking as I tried to breathe the thick black smoke that was filling the corridor, half-flattened under a piece of deck plating. Sirens were wailing everywhere: evacuation sirens, fire sirens, hull integrity alarms all turning into a panicky chorus of noise. The fire hadn’t reached where I was yet, but given the amount of smoke, it was probably eating up atmosphere at an insane rate. And while I couldn’t hear the distinctive whistle of decompression, I could feel it—a fierce, unnatural wind rushing through the Libra as our oxygen was gradually sucked away into the black hole of space.

It was the _Peacemillon_, though I didn’t know it at the time. Howard, insane bastard that he was, had decided to ram his ship right up the _Libra’s_ nose, and for the most part had succeeded. He’d taken out the main array, at least—considering how close we’d been, it was amazing I woke up at all. I scrabbled my way out of the rubble, heaving aside the metal on top of me and staggering to my feet. The corridor wasn’t even recognizeable, bent and twisted, all identifying markers scorched away. Further down there were bodies...I headed towards them instinctively. Most were very messily dead, the odor of burnt flesh adding to the stench. I found Bobby-Harry...he was lying in a corner, curled around a metal spike the explosion had shoved through his ribcage, his eyes dead and surprised in the half-charred mask of his face. I checked for a pulse anyway, not really knowing why. There wasn’t one....no life, no movement, just the spreading pool of his blood seeping through the debris.

There were others...I couldn’t find the other two from my team, though they should have been nearby. But there was no telling how far they might have been thrown. Hell, if they had half a brain, they would have gotten the hell out of here. Assuming they were still alive. I wasn’t the only one up and moving—well, staggering anyway. Through the haze I could see fire control teams working on the edges of the huge caved in sections. No rescuers, not yet...maybe not at all, from what I could see. If other parts of Libra were as damaged as the central section, then there probably wasn’t anyone to spare. I was on my own.

I started climbing out. It was difficult, even with the low grav—the corridor was partially intact, but the central area where the main array had been located was just _gone_, reduced to a slagged mass of twisted metal and open space edged by jagged bits of decking infrastructure. I ended up limping my way towards the main reactor, which seemed to have escaped the worst of the damage. After hauling my ass up into the mostly-intact A block, I was able to find a locker with an intact emergency pack. Yanking the mask on, my first lungful of clean air started me coughing all over again. It was all I could do to limp my way to the nearest terminal and punch up the systems status. The system was damaged, but still up; the image fritzed and wobbled as it showed me just how badly the _Libra_ was wounded. It was bad, but the Libra wasn’t dead yet. More importantly, the outer MS bays were relatively untouched—if I could get to the one where I’d stashed my Taurus, I might actually have a snowball’s chance in hell of making it out of here alive. It was a fair distance from where I was, but... Then I read the rest of readouts.

“....fuck,” I muttered, voice echoing in the mask. I slammed a fist into the wall in frustration. The _Libra_ was still moving. I didn’t know what they were up to, but...I could think of a few possibilities, all of them pretty nasty. I couldn’t just let Quinze do whatever the hell he wanted. Even half-dead, the _Libra_ was one hell of a ship. It deserved a better end than whatever he had planned.

“Otto, you’re an idiot,” I said out loud, turning away from the terminal. “A damned motherfucking MORON.” The power plant that fed the main engines weren’t far from here...if I could get to it, and if no one interfered, I could set it to overload.... If it didn’t destroy the _Libra_ outright, it would at least throw off Quinze’s plans. “And I’m going to fucking KILL Zechs. Assuming I don’t die first.” Of course, it was in the opposite direction of my Taurus, which meant my chances of dying just got that much bigger.

“...damn it.” I ground my teeth and headed down the corridor. I’d come too far to leave this half-finished.

I couldn’t take the direct route to the main engines. That had been blocked off by whatever had punched into the side of the Libra. Instead I circled around, climbing over piles of wreckage, using maintenance accesses to circumvent the blocked areas of corridor. There were fewer sirens in this area, though the haze was still pretty thick. I snagged a gun from a dead body on the way down—I had the feeling I’d need it. The Libra was shivering under my fingers....she was too massive for me to hear anything, but I could feel the vibrations of multiple hull impacts under my hands as I crawled through her innards. It looked like the battle had well and truly come to us.

Unlike most ships, the _Libra_ didn’t have just one power plant, but five, one for each block. It took that many to supply enough power for both the engines and the weapons systems, in addition to all the other necessary support systems. At best, I would only manage to get to the one in A block—but that one was the central plant, which would be more than enough. I’d learned the _Libra_ inside and out in the weeks I’d been onboard. Setting up an overload would be easy...assuming no one stood in my way. Stepping down from the last rung, I looked up and down the massive main corridor. It was empty, though I could hear the echoes of fighting further down. I checked the safety on my gun, and then moved towards the red-marked doors that led to the power plant.

I pushed open the door casually, trying to look like I knew what I was doing. It wasn’t hard...the mask over my face helped. The plant was down to a skeleton crew...it looked like they’d suffered some secondary damage. There were a couple dead bodies here too, shoved near the wall, coats laid over their faces in a hasty attempt at respect. It was obvious that the engineers that remained didn’t have much in the way of time...there were three or four of them left, working frantically to repair something—feedback connectors, looked like. Normally a simple job, but without any spare parts, I’d be amazed if they’d pull it off. Without them, if the plant decided to go critical...well, let’s just say I was hoping they didn’t succeed before I could do my part.

One of the engineers turned, reaching for a tool, and noticed me lurking. “Hey! You there! What’re you doing?”

I lifted my hand, showing I’d heard. “Adler, from C-section.” My voice echoed weirdly through the mask. “I managed to make it out. Thought I’d see if I could help.”

“C-section? Holy shit.” The engineer eyed me with new respect. “You’ve got some serious luck, man. Yeah, we need help. Can you go monitor the reaction levels? We need an extra set of eyes while we’re workin’ on this.”

“I’m on it.” Perfect. The controls were out of sight of the other engineers...maybe I could get away with this without ending up in a gun battle after all. I headed for the control area, and once out of sight, ducked over to an primary control room. Punching up the data, I scanned it. The fusion core was already unstable, fluctuating wildly as the dampers around it failed and auxilaries kicked in. It was almost pathetically easy to cut out even more of the control systems—override codes weren’t necessary when you could simply cut them off from their source. It was quick and dirty, and in about fifteen minutes I was going to have every siren in the world screaming in my ears when the fusion mass hit critical levels...but it would suffice. I tried not to think too hard about those engineers, along with all the others that would die when it went. They knew the risks when they signed on. Besides, it was my ass on the line right alongside them.

Then one of the engineers came to see how I was doing, and blew my cover but good.

I’d never gotten his name...maybe I would have recognized him from the mess hall, if he hadn’t been covered head to toe in soot and grease. As it was, all I could tell was that he was young, and dedicated—and sharp. He rounded the corner, and I snapped my head up. My guilt must have been written all over my face, because he hesitated in mid-step. Then the first siren went off, indicators going red under my hands, and I could see the realization dawning across his face. “You—!” He lunged. And I shot him.

It was instinct more than anything. I’d been trained, but...I’d never been in close-quarters combat in my life. And yet it was so fucking _easy_. My arm jerked up, my finger squeezed, three shots, just like on the range. And then the guy was falling backward, blood spraying, his chest full of holes.

_”Scheisse!”_ Between the sirens and the gunshots—I lunged for the control room door, slamming it closed and locking it just as the others came running. I leaned there for a moment, hands shaking, trying not to look at the corpse I’d just made. The man was either dead or dying anyway.... Given the number of people I was planning to kill, it was stupid how guilty I felt over this one.

“Adler! Open up!” The hammering on the steel door woke me out of my daze, and sent me stumbling to the other wall. “Rosen? Rosen! You in there? Adler! What the fuck is going on?” There was some other muttered conversation I couldn’t hear, then a sharp, “—what are you, stupid? Don’t shoot at that in here! Go get a torch!”

Well, fuck. I’d managed get myself cornered but good. I looked at the controls...the reaction was still building. It would take a bit of time—but it was only moments away from getting past the point of no return. After that, no one could stop it, and everyone in this block would be crispy-crittered but good, assuming we weren’t vaporized outright. Including me.

_Damn it._ Planting my back against the far wall, I slid down it, facing the door. The gun was still in my hand—I had nine shots left. Enough to kill the first couple people that made it through, if I got lucky, if they didn’t shoot me first. The pounding on the door had stopped, and I could hear the hiss of the cutting torch. That didn’t take them long. It was funny, really. They wanted to get in so badly—and all I wanted to do was get out. Too bad we couldn’t switch places.

They were halfway through the lock when Quinze’s voice came over the ship’s com, booming like the voice of God. _//”All personnel—we are initialising final thrust. Evacuate at your own discretion. I pray for your safety.”//  
_

The com clicked off, along with the sound of the cutting torch. There was a long moment of silence. I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard...and apparently neither could the guys outside. ‘Evacuate at our own discretion’? In the middle of a firefight with MDs, Gundams, and God-only-knew what else? What kind of crap was that? And...final thrust? What the hell did that mean? Then I froze, remembering what I’d seen.

“Oh no...you’re shitting me.” The main array was gone. _Libra_ had no weapons left, nothing that would change the course of the battle...except herself. “...SonuvaBITCH.” Quinze was going to ram.

I wasn’t the only one who’d figured it out, apparently. There were some muffled shouts, and then I heard the clatter of tools falling to the floor. I cautiously got up and approached the door... Nothing. Dead silence. Gun at the ready, I eased it open. Sure enough, they’d bugged out. Guess they thought they’d take their chances with the Gundams. Glancing over at the panels, I hesitated, wondering if I should try to do more damage. One look at the readouts convinced me I’d done all I could do. This reactor was going to go critical in less time than I wanted to think about, and I could only hope it would toast Quinze’s ass in the process.

So I ran. I knew I stood almost no chance of making my Taurus in time, but I had to try. I pounded down the corridors, cursing under my breath, the _Libra_ shuddering and quaking around me as Quinze made his final move. In the back my head, a little voice faithfully counted down the time I had left—not much. Not enough.

I was almost at the MS bays when the _Libra_ *lurched* in a way that shouldn’t be possible for a battle station her size. It threw me off my feet, skidding against the floor and then bounced towards the ceiling as the already-shaky gravity failed completely. Grabbing for the nearest support, I hung on like I was drowning, listening to metal crunch and tear around me. Debris was being thrown around, floating everywhere. I could hear a distant roar, a sound that I couldn’t recognize. An explosion? Or impact? I couldn’t tell. Twisting aside just in time to avoid getting skewered by the business end of a broken I-beam, I threw myself in the general direction of the open doors of the bay.

Everything exploded around me. I had just enough time for my mental clock to stutter, and think _too soon!_...then fire erupted everywhere. The joins of the decks were tearing apart, pipes exploding in a hail of chemicals and sharp-edged shrapnel. I slammed into something, I don’t know what—and felt my skin scorching and shredding under the blast. I’m sure I would have screamed, if I’d had the breath for it. I slammed into another unyielding surface. There was the sickening crunch of bone, a moment of disbelieving pain, and then I was...out.

* * *

 

This time, waking up was infinitely harder. For a moment all I could do was lie there, limply floating, and blink, dimly amazed I was waking up at all. Then the pain hit, and I wished I hadn’t.

_”Scheisse...”_ I groaned, curling inward. There was blood and soot covering the faceplate of my mask, making it difficult to see. But it felt like I’d cracked more than a couple ribs—maybe even broken them. And something was wrong with my shoulder...I didn’t dare look. But my arm wasn’t moving like I was telling it to.

_I have to get out of here._ I had no idea how I was still alive. But I wasn’t going to stay that way for long, if I couldn’t get my ass moving. I bumped into something solid, and used it to push off without thinking, turning my aimless drifting into something resembling a direction. I was in the MS bay...maybe. It was hard to tell, there was so much damage. Swiping away some of the grime from my mask, I could see the drifting forms of a couple Suits, vacant and damaged, looking like oversized corpses in the dimness. My Taurus... It would be at the very back of the bay. I grabbed another stationary piece of debris with my good arm, and pushed off again. It hurt like a sonuvabitch. Behind me, I knew, was a odd floating trail of blood droplets, marking my progress. _Please God...be watching just this once. Let it still be there.  
_

It was.

Still docked, still where I left it—a bit scarred up, but still blessedly intact. I decided right then and there that the Gundams could go screw themselves. I’d never seen anything as beautiful as that Taurus.

Somehow I managed to get inside. Thank God for standard-issue medkits...I wasted precious seconds to slap a double-A patch on and spray some foam sealant over my shoulder. Having blood floating all over the cockpit was not going to help my concentration. Bringing the Taurus online was easily accomplished, even with scorched and shaky hands. The adrenacortisol was kicking in, making the pain bearable, letting me do what I needed to do. It hadn’t taken much forethought to have everything in standby mode—despite the risk to my cover, an escape attempt with cold engines was something only an idiot would try. Screens snapped on obediently around me, surrounding me with light and data. The controls thrummed under my hands and feet—indicators flickering yellow, then green, signalling their readiness.

“Good girl...” I muttered hoarsely. Tactical would show me if there was a clear path out. I glanced at the screen—then did a double-take, unable to believe my eyes. For a fraction of a second I was convinced that the battle systems were on the fritz, damaged in the explosion. Then a icy cold knot twisted in my belly at the realization of what I was *really* seeing.

I’d thought I was going to have to fight my way clear of the _Libra_. What I hadn’t realized was that I wasn’t even on _Libra_—not anymore. Me, my Taurus, and almost the entirety of block A had been torn free from the main body of the battle station. My brain ticked over the new facts, scrambling to put the pieces together. That explosion—it hadn’t been the fusion plant. It had been something else, something that was still pushing the main bulk of the Libra away, leaving a trail of twisted wreckage to fall in its wake. Wreckage that included me. And we *were* falling—caught in Earth’s gravity well, without any engines to break us free.

_Shit. shitshitshitSHIT._ Oddly enough, our trajectory was the least of my problems at the moment. That fusion plant that I’d oh-so-cleverly sabotaged? It was still going to explode. Taurus or not, I was *not* going to hang around for that one.

My hands flew, firing up all the systems, bypassing the normal checks. Thrusters boiled into life in seconds, scorching the nearby bay walls and incinerating free-floating pieces of debris. A moment to orient, then I threw the Suit forward, heading for the freedom of open space. Metal wreckage clanged and bounced against armor plate as we bulled our way out of the destroyed bay. There was no time for finesse. I’d left the reactor at 0242. According to the chrono, it was 0257...I’d been out for fifteen minutes. Which gave me another five to get clear, at best. I shot through the twisting corridors desperately, pushing it recklessly fast. The block’s internal atmosphere was almost entirely gone, but there were any number of chemicals still floating around in the wreckage, turning the interior into a murky haze. I wasn’t quite flying blind, but I had to rely heavily on my sensor net to avoid any collisions. Thankfully, the further I got, the clearer the sensor data became, no longer hampered by layers upon layers of hull plating.

I hit another corridor, this one larger—a main access of some kind. Throwing the Taurus into a sharp turn, I bumped up the acceleration another notch, kicking in all the aft thrusters in our race towards freedom. I was dimly grateful for the relative ease of the maneuver out here in space. The doctors had been right. It was hard enough to breathe as it was, the heavy acceleration pressing me against the harness. If I’d had to deal with pulling Gs as well...

_Four minutes left,_ the little voice in the back of my head said, bringing me back to attention. My hands clenched, sweating fingers white around the controls. Blips began springing to life on the readout as the sensors began registering Mobile Suits outside the wreckage. Most of them were aimless, drifting—the majority seemed to be inert MDs, with a few derelict Oz suits mixed in. Tactical was locking IDs and calculating odds. Most of the active MS were keeping their distance, the few close-in manned squadrons too busy retreating to interfere. My breath caught as the first Gundam ID popped on screen—it was close. Ungodly close...what the hell was it still *doing* here? But it was also bugging out, just like all the rest—followed by second Gundam, then a third. But there was fourth Gundam ID—an ID blip that wasn’t moving at all, deep inside the wreckage. Something about that bothered me... Uneasy with the thought of a Gundam to my rear, I refocused my sensors on that blip, feeling the seconds crawl by as they struggled to obtain the data I wanted.

It was Gundam 01....and Epyon.

I felt my heart stop. Zechs was inside the block. Right at the heart of it, in fact, deep inside the wreckage next to the reactor. A fusion reactor about to go critical. And as far as I could tell, the moron hadn’t even noticed!

There was nothing I could do. The reactor could go at any moment—my countdown was guesswork at best. I was almost clear—I could see the jagged edge of my exit, framing the open stars. Zechs had to get out on his own. No doubt he was still caught up in the battle against his nemesis, 01. Even so, he had to realize where he was. Epyon was a fast MS—if he left now, he should still be able to get clear of the wreckage. I stared at the screen, willing those little dots to move. There was no way Marquise would continue such a stupid, suicidal...

_”GodDAMMit!!”_ I wrenched at the controls, triggering secondary thrusters and spinning my Taurus around in a full one-eighty. I couldn’t believe what I was doing, even while I was doing it. I’d obviously lost what few marbles I had left. I kicked on the afterburners, sending the Taurus screaming back into the wreckage, straight into the heart of that damn ticking bomb.

_Three minutes... _

The Gundam 01 blip had finally moved. It was rocketing away, insanely fast. But Epyon was still just sitting there like a lump. I ground my teeth, and blew apart another piece of interior wall with the beam cannon, speeding through the cloud of debris, unwilling to take the seconds needed to go around. The place was already starting to disintegrate around me, explosions rumbling and belching fire, blowing apart joined metal and blackened fibersteel. _Motherfucking piece of shit....why isn’t Zechs MOVING?_ Banking and jinking madly, I cursed Zechs for being a moron, me for being an even bigger one, and OZ for making the _Libra_ so damn *big*.

The black opening of a venting shaft opened up in front of me, and I dived down it nose-first, my Taurus dropping like a rock. It was like descending into the bowels of hell. We were close to the power plant now, my bones creaking as gravity flexed around us, lurching unnaturally as the confined plasma core of the reactor pressed outward, looking for more matter to consume. What little light I’d had left had disappeared as we dropped, heading ever deeper. The MS was quaking around me, my teeth rattling as it vibrated, keening with the nerve-wracking sound of armor plate stressed to its limits.

_Two minutes..._

Light, when it came, was a brilliant white that seared my eyes. My Taurus came screaming out of the shaft at full throttle, and hit an oncoming fireball face-first. All the viewscreens whited out in the blast, new alarms adding to the chorus of noise as the cockpit temperature jumped. But the armor held, scorched and slagged around the edges, and we came through the fire, falling into the open cavern of the power plant, straight towards where Zechs was waiting.

Epyon looked like shit. There was no other word for it; it looked like it had been through hell and back. It was listing, obviously badly damaged, most of its weaponry gone. There were entire sections of outer armor missing—for the first time I wondered if Zechs had stayed because he had no other choice. Dismissing the thought as irrelevant, I punched open a channel with a vindictive stab of a finger. Motivations later—rescue now.

“Zechs! I’m getting you out—do you copy?” I didn’t wait for an answer. I didn’t have time. I just charged forward, hoping like hell he didn’t have the ammo left to blow me away. My landing was haphazard at best—I was going too fast for it to be otherwise.

_//“...what?”//_ It had taken a few seconds for Zechs’ end of the channel to open, but now he was glaring up at me through the tiny image. Taking in the stubborn set of that jaw, I groaned inwardly.

“No time. We gotta go—this thing’s going to blow!” My Taurus lunged forward, wrapping gauntlets around Zechs’ Suit in a makeshift full nelson. Using the momentum, I piled on the thrust once more, intending to lift us both away—and then Epyon sent us both spinning as Zechs did his damndest to knock my block off.

_//”No! I don’t know who you are, but I’ve got to see this through!”//_

_One minute left..._ My frustration boiled over. All this, and he STILL didn’t have a clue! I let him have it with both barrels.

“Godammit, Zechs!” He’d managed to fight partially free; I used that free arm to plunge a gauntleted fist into a hole in Epyon’s armor, wrapping my hand around the frame of the MS itself. “I am not fucking dying for you twice!!” Like it or not, Zechs was coming with me. Epyon had gone still at my shout, and I used the opportunity, sending us both spiralling up towards the vent I’d entered by. Gotta find the shortest route out... Behind us, the decking had crumbled, the walls around them melting into slag as the final reductors on the reactor failed.

_//....Otto?//_ Zechs voice was...odd. Any other time, and I’d be enjoying his expression—it wasn’t every day I got to throw his High-and-Mightiness for a loop. But there was no time for that, not if we wanted to live.

“Yeah. Now shut up and let me pilot this damn thing,” I barked. There was no time to spare to worry about Zechs’ reaction; my eyes were focused only on the nav screens. External temperatures were rising rapidly, flames chasing us up the exhaust shaft. I had piled on every inch of thrust, and it wasn’t enough, not with Epyon’s extra mass. In desperation, I brought up the defensor screen. The planet defensors I’d cannibalized from an unlucky Virgo weren’t built for this kind of use, and I had no idea how long my cobbled-together attempt would last. But they were all I had.

The pipe we were in shuddered from another, larger explosion, and alarms started ringing as plasma boiled up behind us. My Taurus was racing upwards, an inch ahead of the destruction, smoke and blown apart metal turning my viewscreens into incoherent fiery chaos. There was no way to see where I was going—even my sensors were being blinded, overloaded by heat and radiation. I was flying blind, using my remaining instruments and my memory in a desperate attempt to keep us headed in the right direction. Trying to outrun the avalanche of cascading explosions that were consuming block A from the inside out.

My Taurus lost one planet defensor, then two, burning out and exploding under the strain. The others shifted to compensate like they’d been designed to, but the shield’s effectiveness had dropped by over fifty percent. More debris was getting through, my Suit shuddering as they clanged off the headpiece and main body. Warnings were popping up all over my screens as systems began to overload: cooling systems leaking, engines starting to go critical, armor sections breached or failing.

“Don’t you quit on me, you motherfucking piece of shit,” I shouted at it. “Not after all the work I put into you!” There was a funny sort of noise from the com—I’d forgotten it was still open. Oops.

_There!_ Through the fire, I caught the barest glimpse of stars. It was there and gone in a second, but I threw my Taurus after them anyway, hoping it wasn’t a mirage, hoping they promised a way clear.

Then my main thrusters failed.

I’d been pushing them past redline for too long, ignoring the warnings as I attempted the impossible. They’d held out as long as they could, but...it hadn’t been long enough. The vernier engines overloaded, their support systems already dead, and the emergency cutoffs kicked in. My remaining secondary thrusters sputtered unevenly, tossing our joined Suits against the walls of the exhaust shaft. We bounced—I had to fight against blacking out as I was thrown against my harness. The patch was wearing off; it was hard to see past old memories. Tallgeese had done this to me, just before—

“No, goddammit!!” I slammed both fists into my boards, not caring what I hit. My fit of fury was useless as we bounced again, and again, fire everywhere, smoke hazing the air. Zechs shouted something, I think, but I couldn’t make it out. There was another massive explosion, snapping us around with a shuddering jolt, and I wondered if this was going to be it—

—and then there were stars.

Stars, all around us, and the dark deep emptiness of space. I blinked, my breathing harsh in the sudden silence, wondering for a moment if I’d died. Only two of my viewscreens still functioned, the rest blackened and cracked. But I could see the stars...and Epyon, still with me, battered and hanging limply. We spun slowly together, stars wheeling around us as we drifted off with the other debris. There was no way of breaking free—the gauntlets of my Taurus had been welded to Epyon’s frame, armor plate slagged by the heat of the explosion, turning our Suits into a strange pair of Siamese twins.

“....we’re alive.” My voice sounded hoarse and strange and not quite real, echoing in the silent confines of my cockpit. “Holy shit. We’re still alive.”

Static crackled in answer. I listened to it numbly, fitful fizzes and pops as what was left of my communications tried to stutter to life. More static...then Zechs’ voice came through, broken and garbled over the comm. _//”—tto. What—**fzzt**! -ou doing?”//_ The channel began to resolve itself, Zechs’ face coming through the static. He looked...well, pretty much like I felt. Like a wet rag, wrung out and thrown into a corner. _//”That is you, right? Otto?”//_

Uncurling stiff fingers from their deathgrip on the controls, I blinked at the screen. “Who else would be stupid enough to try something like this? Of course it’s me.” The adrenaline was starting to wear off, and I was having a hard time focusing.

_//”But...why? How? Why are you here?"//_ Zechs sounded genuinely baffled.

I couldn’t help it. I began to laugh—deep, painful barks of laughter, the taste of smoke in my mouth. “Well, lieutenant—sorry, colonel—I was hoping you could tell me that.” Zechs’ puzzled expression had shifted into something more wary. I leaned forward, closer to the vid pickups. I knew I wasn’t much to look at—covered in soot and blood, graying hair sticking up in all directions. No wonder Zechs didn’t recognize me. “People aren’t chess pieces, colonel. They don’t always stay where you stick them.”

_//”Otto...I didn’t mean... You’re not just a chess piece.”// _

“No?” I wanted to be angry. I had a *right* to be angry, after all Zechs had done. But for some reason, somewhere along the line, my anger had bled away. What was left behind...was something else. Something empty and aching that I didn’t recognize. “What am I, then? After Sanc...I woke up in that hospital, you know. After you wrote me off.” I stuffed the rest of my accusations behind my teeth, afraid I wasn’t making sense as it was. “What was I? An inconvenience?”

There was a long, stretched out silence. Finally, Zech said softly,_ //”....I don’t know.”// Something must have told him that answer wasn’t good enough, because he continued. //”You weren’t an inconvenience. Hell, Otto—you damn near died, just to free Sanc. I owe you that. And I owe you for the Tallgeese....it saved my life. And now I owe you for this, even—even if I didn’t want it.”// He took a deep, shuddering breath. //”...I don’t know, Otto. I just knew...after we pulled you out...that I didn’t want any more of my men dying for me. And then...I lost sight of that as well.”//  
_

I scrubbed my hands over my face. Fine tremors were running through my fingers; leftover shock and adrenaline, my body realizing it was still alive. “Damn it, Zechs....”

_//...I’m sorry, Otto.//_ Zechs’ quiet voice continued. _//’I just...don’t know anymore. Not you, not myself...I thought Treize had given me the answer, but even that wasn’t right. And now...”//_ He looked down, his face drawn in tired lines. Other than that one brief moment in Tshabong, It was the first time I’d seen him up close without his mask. I was starting to realize just how much it had allowed Zechs to hide. I had always expected Zechs to have the answers; it had never occurred to me that he might not have any. That he might be just like the rest of us: running around doing the best he could, and fucking up along the way.

It was pretty sad that I had to blow up the _Libra_—and myself—to figure that out.

Speaking of which—as much as I wanted my answers, we still had a bit of a problem on our hands. A quick scan of my panels showed that most of my instruments were still out. Life support was still functional—for now—but my engines weren’t. “Zechs.” I said, catching his attention. “What’s Epyon’s status?”

He blinked at the sudden change of topic, but turned towards his boards. I could hear the click of toggle switches and the beeping of alarms in protest as Zechs took stock of the damage. _//”Not good,”//_ came the verdict, finally. _//”No engines, sensors offline, minimal power to systems—looks like the damage might be fixable, though, if we can unhook Epyon from your Suit. What kind of tools do you have?”//_

I snorted and shook my head. “I can’t go EVA—even if I was up to it, I don’t have a suit.” Which was breaking the most basic rule of MS piloting...it didn’t matter if you were OZ, Alliance, or random spacer: you didn’t climb into an MS without a flight suit, simple as that. Funny how that hadn’t seemed quite so important when the Libra was crashing down around my ears.  
_  
//”No suit...wait. You’re injured?”//_ Zechs came back into the range of the vid pickups, scrutinizing the bloody patches on my uniform.

_//”How badly?”// _

“I’ve had worse.” Which was the truth...I just didn’t bother saying that this was probably pretty damn bad in their own right. It wasn’t like Zechs had a surgical team to pull out of his back pocket. I hit another couple switches. The radiation had knocked out the high bandwidth tactical stuff, but suit-to-suit frequencies were still working, obviously....and so were emergency beacons. “It shouldn’t be a problem—even with White Fang IDs, no doubt Khushrenada will have teams out looking for survivors. We can just set a beacon and—”

_//”Otto.”//_ Zechs voice was harsh, his words rough. _//”Treize is dead.”//_

“—and wait for...what?”

I stuttered for a halt. For a moment, I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly. But looking at his face... “You’re sure it wasn’t someone else? I mean...General Khushrenada is—”

_//”He’s dead. Oz surrendered shortly afterwards.”//_

“...how? When?” A sudden, uncomfortable thought popped up. “Did you....?”

_//”No.”//_ Zechs replied flatly, face rigid. I’d seen that look before. Whatever issues he’d had with Treize...Zechs hadn’t wanted him dead._//“One of the Gundams did it.”//_

I had to stop for a moment and absorb it. General Khushrenada was dead. It seemed impossible. For all I’d expected Zechs to get himself killed one day, doing some insane maneuver, Khushrenada had never fit into that category. He had been the driving force of OZ, long before Operation Daybreak. And for a long time, Khushrenada embodied everything I’d hated about it: the arrogance, the assumptions, the fancy attitudes about chivalry and the nobility of war. It was hard to believe that all of that had just...gone away.

_Dead._

I closed my eyes for a moment. I couldn’t mourn Khushrenada...not like I knew Zechs would. He had never been my friend. But he had been my commander-in-chief. I could give him a moment of silence, at least.

The moment passed, and I shook myself back into order. Or tried to—it proved to be tougher than I expected, my mind kept trying to go woozy and slip away. Scowling, I rummaged for the medkit and another double-A. Zechs figured out what I was doing about when I slapped the patch on.

_//”Otto.”//_ There was some of that old snap to his voice. It made me sit up and pay attention, whether I liked it or not. _//”Report. How bad is __it?”//_

“Not good,” I admitted reluctantly, panting slightly for breath. Everything was painfully sharp as the new drugs kicked in, my focus narrowing down, everything becoming so crisp and clear that it almost hurt my eyes. I could feel the thumping of my heart speed up, then settle. Two patches was pushing it. If I took another... “Cracked ribs, shoulder’s torn up... I should be functional for a while longer, though.” I had to be. “All right. We can’t count on a rescue from OZ,” I said, oh-so-subtly changing the subject. “We’ll need to do something about our trajectory, then, before we end up in the asteroid belt.”

_//”How? The engines are down.”//_

“Secondary thrusters.” I could see Zechs beginning to nod thoughtfully, even before I got to the rest of my makeshift plan. “The smaller ones are designed to be fired with minimal power drain—there should be enough of a charge left in the plant to allow for controlled burns. We’ve gotta get it right on the first try, though. Otherwise we’re screwed.”

_//”All right. We have two Suits to work with. Which makes the calculations tougher, but gives us more maneuvering capability.”//_ Zechs’ voice had turned brisk, but I could still tell he was giving me little sideways looks whenever he thought I wasn’t paying attention, like he was expecting me to take a nosedive into my panels. _//”Then what?”//_

“Then we set a beacon, get rescued, and live happily ever after, dammit.” The universe owed me that much. “I know a couple of Sweeper frequencies. If we can get ourselves into a stable orbit, I can modify my beacon to transmit on those. After a battle like this, I’m sure they’ll have ships out—it’s too good an opportunity to waste.”

_//”Scavengers,”//_ Zechs said distastefully.

“Yeah, well, don’t knock it. Those scavengers are the best hope we’ve got.” Howard’s boys didn’t owe me anything. But they also wouldn’t leave us to die. It was an unwritten rule, I’d learned. Enemy or friend, you didn’t leave other spacers behind, not if you had any choice. Not when it could be you the next time, waiting to die in that endless cold night.

I bent my head over the boards, bringing up flickering status reports. The numbers weren’t good—I had less reserve power than I’d thought. They were also jumping and wobbling sporadically at the periphery of my vision every time I glanced away. I didn’t want to admit it...especially given my only other alternative. Said alternative being the man who did just try to destroy a good portion of the Earth. But a few minutes later, when I found myself running the same calculation for the fourth time....I had to admit defeat. I needed help.

“Zechs. You’re going to need to calculate the burn. I’m sending you my data—make sure to figure in for both sets of thrusters. I’ll start reconfiguring the beacon.” I tried to cover my reservations, make it nothing more than a brusque not-a-request.

From the look on Zechs’ face, I wasn’t fooling him one bit. Zechs was no engineer. But he was a pilot—not to mention a damned perceptive bastard—and like all pilots, had an innate knack for spatial equations. _//”Are you sure?”//_

I didn’t know how to answer that. Truth be told, I hadn’t been sure of anything since Sanc—since that one single half-remembered moment of clarity in which I’d understood what I needed to do. That moment was gone. We were both different—this war had changed us. Changed him. Now...both our lives were in his hands.

Looking down at the small image of Zechs’ face, worried and drawn, I gave him the only answer I had.

“Do the calculations, sir. I trust you to get us home.”

* * *

  


### EPILOGUE

  


Pretty much everyone knows what happened after that, what with the Gundams saving the day, the colonies declaring peace, and so on and so forth. Of course, Zechs tried to beat himself up over that too. I think he was just pissed that 01 managed to save the Earth instead of him—along with a healthy dose of ‘oh-god-what-have-I-done’ angst, of course.

I put up with it for as long as I could, then dragged him out and got him drunk. And when he tried to pack up and disappear a few days later, I got him drunk again. Then I dragged his ass back, unpacked his duffel, and explained a few home truths while he sobered up. Like the fact that I’d gotten myself almost killed more times than I cared to count following his ass around, and how I’d REALLY appreciate it if I didn’t have to do it again. In really small words, because it was obvious all the brain cells weren’t quite working yet.

Amazingly enough, it worked.

* * *

The door to the shop opened with a creak. It was late—the colony had dimmed to ‘night’ several hours ago, and I’d been enjoying the quiet after the craziness of the day. It was hard to complain about having too much work—it paid the rent, after all—but I always looked forward to puttering around by myself at the end of the evening. Picking up a greasy rag, I wiped my hands. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t end up much cleaner than when I started.  
“Either come in or go out. You’re letting in the flies.” I turned to face the intruder fully. Zechs stepped into the shop, closing the door behind him.

“You heard?”

“Hard not to. Entire Earth Sphere is buzzing with it, you know.” I threw the rag in a bin, and gave Zechs an assessing look. He was wearing an battered old leather jacket, and leaned against the doorway of the shop easily, shoulders straight. The quiet of the last year had done him some good, given him some space. But I recognized that expression. “You’re going?”

“I have to.”

I’d be a liar if I said I hadn’t seen that coming. It hurt, in a way. Letting go always did. But—it felt right, too. “All right. Come on.”

He blinked at me, surprised. Apparently that wasn’t the reaction he’d been expecting. I snorted at him, jerking my thumb towards the door before grabbing my coat. Stepping outside, I shoved my hands in my pockets, heading down the street.

“Where are we going?” Zechs had fallen into step alongside. Even taking the lead, I had to stretch my legs to match his longer stride. I’d gotten used to it by now.

“Not far. Just up to the next block.” I didn’t want to say more. Not yet. I could feel his impatient sideways look. No doubt he’d rehearsed this scene, choosing his ammunition. That he’d say *this*, and that I’d argue *that*, and that he’d convince me that it was necessary. Or maybe that he wouldn’t, and he’d leave anyway. And now he was annoyed—though he’d never admit it—because I’d blown all his careful plans out of the water.

Like I said. I’d seen it coming.

A short walk, and then I turned up an alley, climbing up a rusty old switchback stair to the side access door. The massive bulk of C-126’s industrial core loomed over the smaller building, burying us in shadow. The shop door was unremarkable—but the security was top notch. I knew, because I’d seen Howard put it in.

Zechs’ gaze had sharpened as I keyed in the code and pressed my hand to the plate. “Otto? What is this?”

The door opened with a hiss. I shrugged and waved him inside. “My dirty little secret.”

The lights had switched on automatically as we entered. Under them—was the Tallgeese, gleaming and new again. Tallgeese II, I called it. Unoriginal, maybe, but I couldn’t imagine this beast of mine with any other name.

Zechs had stopped short, spine stiff, eyes locked on the MS in front of him. I had to give him a nudge before he stepped completely in, letting me shut the door behind us. “Tallgeese...” he breathed, hands reaching out and gripping the guardrail. “How.... You did all this?”

“Not by myself.” I waved a hand at the facility, the machinery, Tallgeese in its new armor plate, gleaming silver and blue under the lights. “I don’t have this kind of money. But...the Sweepers found it. What was left of it. Howard got word to me, brought me down to see it...well, I couldn’t just leave it like that.” I’d rebuilt the Tallgeese, recreated it using every bit of hard-won tech I’d learned from the Gundam designers. Taking up the challenge again had been something I’d needed to do, even if I hadn’t realized it at the time.

Now—the Tallgeese that had almost killed me was gone. Treize had destroyed it, and I’d remade it.

And now Zechs needed it.

“No point going to battle if you don’t have a weapon.” Crossing my arms, I risked a sideways glance, watching that face sharpen as Zechs realized all the possibilities of what I was offering him.

“Otto...” Zechs sounded relieved, and exhilarated, and stunned all at once. I took a certain amount of pride in the fact that I’d reduced him to incoherency. “I...This is unbelievable.”

“Yep.” I turned, facing him soberly. “I’m not giving it to you, though.”

That brought Zechs around, a flash of bewildered anger on his face. “Then why—?”

“Nope. I’m not giving it to you,” I said again, not letting him finish, meeting his eyes squarely. “But since you’re going anyway—consider it a loan.”  
I’d never piloted this Tallgeese. I gave that to Zechs, the privilege of being the first and only pilot to sit in that cockpit and take it to war. And a small, superstitious part of me hoped that it would bring him back again.

Looking at Zechs, I knew he understood.

“You’ve got a deal,” he murmured, reaching out to grip my shoulder. “Thank you, Otto. We won’t let you down.”

“Damn straight.” I could feel a grin spreading across my face—the first honest-to-god smile I could remember having in years. “Or I’ll chase you down and kick your ass, and I don’t care how long it takes.”

Wonder of wonders, Zechs was smiling too. Both of us stood there, grinning at each other like idiots.

“I can live with that."


End file.
